


Crossroads at the River Styx

by SetsunaNoroi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Dean tries to be a good dad, Doesn't exactly know how, Emma (Supernatural: Slice Girls) Lives, Episode: s07e13 The Slice Girls, F/F, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hunter Emma (Supernatural: Slice Girls), M/M, One Night Stands, Pagan Gods, Protective Dean Winchester, She's confused a lot, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SetsunaNoroi/pseuds/SetsunaNoroi
Summary: Emma can feel the waters at her feet, ready to pull her under. She doesn't have the two coins to cross and there's nothing waiting for her. Except a moment of honesty saves her, a belief in real honor entrusts her to her father, and she finds herself the charge of not Amazon sisters but hunter brothers. Dean wants her, and it's enough to make her own legend. Slice Girls alternative creating a rewrite of canon events where Dean grows to be a dad, gets the courage to admit he loves Castiel, and pagan gods take the chance to get involved in the boy's lives as much as they're allowed in an attempt to fix some issues they have with how the world's been getting run lately.Gabriel hates getting pulled into all the politics he's been trying to avoid since he took Loki as a host and Sam just finds the whole mess a headache, neither helped when they just can't stop ending up in bed together. And in it all Crowley just won't keep his selfish head down and make life easy for anyone.All in all, Emma's life is going to get really complicated, but when has anything been normal for a Winchster? Adding in the normal drama of the life of the Greek gods? It was just asking for trouble.





	1. Drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so it's the classic Emma lives story. Well, I don't know how classic. It's been written before, but I notice Emma shows up a lot more in AU stories to make Dean a single parent than usually to canon fics. Understandable since in the show she's a little… well, murder happy. So I'd just thought I'd try my hand at it since I love the potential of the character that was never explored in the show. Seriously, loving and trusting your family despite how messed up they are is the show's main theme. I can't help but think an Amazon daughter would fit right in after an adjustment period.
> 
> Expect awkward Dean, annoyed but willing to try Sam, and a girl who's scared but a little too stubborn to admit just how fragile she can be out loud. A small and broken family that will stick together come hell or high water.

Emma hadn't experienced much in her life. Just the tribe, the laws, the teachings about what her life should and will be if she's strong enough to pass her trial. It didn't mean she's ignorant though. Her kind learn fast, soak up knowledge like sponges, take things in and memorize so quickly it's like they've always known it. So of course she knew what a hotel was, that it's a sort of temporary home for travelers, a place to rest before moving on to the next spot.

The restless move around a lot, and the strong. Her teachers explained it to her, about why they moved every couple of years. Settle down, breed, kill and then move on to do it all over again. The sisters do this to keep going, to stay alive, and continue the tribe. They do it because they were demanded by their goddess to, to find fertile ground and fertile men, their prey.

Hunters travel too, to find their own prey, the monsters.

'He'll kill you if you hesitate,' they'd told her. 'They see us as monsters, but we're not. We're blessed. Remember that.'

She wasn't experienced in much yet in her short life, but she was pretty sure burning marks into teen girls falls under the definition of monsters. It's a hunch despite her teachings.

She'd been told crossroads are important to her pantheon, and thus important to the tribe. That the greatest heroes often have to make choices and overcome trials. Transition is everything for them, to learn the lessons of life through hardships and battle and everything else told in the old stories of adventure and legends. It was her own crossroad now, her own choice, her own transition. All she had to do was take one life and she would be born into fire to make her own legend.

Honestly, it did make the kill sound a little romantic. It made sense. Centuries to work on the philosophy that justified hunting down people was a long time to make sure something sounded reasonable. Like killing, the torture and teachings had been perfected to an art form. Yet when she raised her hand to knock on the door of the little hovel of a hotel, she felt the burn still on her skin as her clothes drug across her mark. They'd told her she was too hesitant, that it was weakness, that she had to move past her fears or she would die, that he would cut her down without mercy.

She didn't even know what mercy was supposed to be. Harmonia knew she'd never been shown any herself. Even as she heard the footsteps approach the door, approach her, she stared at her mark, at her binding into the culture she'd been born into with no chance to ever even choose it. She'd flinched when they'd given it to her while the other girls had stood tall next to her. Even when encouraged to bear it, she could see the disappointment in the eyes of her teacher for not withstanding the pain unflinchingly without being told to.

They thought her weak, and slow to follow orders even if she did in the end. Despite the warnings, the urging to be strong when facing Dean Winchester, she saw it in their eyes. If she failed, no one would be shocked.

She wasn't at a crossroad. She was at the shore of the River Styx and they hadn't even seen fit to give her two coins for passage to meet Hades.

The door opened and she knew it was him, even without having to say a word. If she was feeling more philosophical and less fatalistic about all of this, she'd have told herself it was a bond between child and parent but that wasn't even remotely true. She just remembered him, standing at her crib as he looked down at her, kindness in his eyes and a soft smile on his face. Emma hadn't known him then and had thus asked, only to be told by her mother later that he was her father and therefore her target, her first kill. None of the other girls had met their fathers, hadn't seen kind smiles or heard the soft tone full of… she wasn't even sure what. It had been such a simple thing. "Hi, Emma." Nothing more than that, but it stuck with her and she didn't know why.

There wasn't kindness in his eyes at the moment, just suspicion as he glanced around quickly to see if she was alone. She felt surprised when she took it personally. He was a hunter. Of course he was suspicious and yet… It hurt. He didn't trust her, didn't know her, and it ached for some reason. She wished she was a child again, a little girl and could hear that, "Hi, Emma," unfiltered, unguarded. Words of kindness, simple as they were, were still kindness.

She hadn't had a lot of that in the last couple days.

Not that she deserved it. She'd been sent here to kill him after all. He'd be stupid not to be wary and from what she'd heard of hunters they were far from stupid.

"Hi," she said, her voice softer than she would have liked. "You don't know me, but my name is Emma. I need your help. I think I'm in trouble and you're the only person I can trust."

"Why?" he asked, his tone stiff and a little guarded.

"Because you're my father," she confessed. There was a trace of surprise in his eyes, but not much. Had he figured things out? He was on her tribe's trail. He must know something, a few things at least. Did he know why she was here? Would he fight her?

He didn't leap to attack though, didn't suddenly pull out a weapon or anything that could be considered threatening. It was so far so good.

"How'd you find this place?" he asked.

"They've been watching you," she informed him. "Ever since Mom got pregnant. They have to keep track of the fathers… for later."

She shouldn't have said that last part. She shouldn't even hint at the killings, but he already knew. He'd been following them anyway. Why not be honest on that point?

"If you're such a prisoner, you mind telling me how you escaped?" he asked her.

She took a deep breath. Right at the river, right at her death without coin to pay the toll. If she didn't live, didn't kill him, she'd be stuck at the shore to never even move on, dead and forgotten with no legend and no stories to her name.

He would kill her. Her mother was a warrior, her father a hunter, and they'd bred to create her and make the ultimate test for her. None of the other girls had to face this, their fathers all practically helpless and defenseless. He was so different, prey but a predator too. If she hesitated, if she gave into weakness, he'd destroy her.

"Hi, Emma," rang in her mind and she squeezed her eyes shut before shaking her head.

"I didn't," she whispered. "They let me go."

"What?" he asked, confused. "Why?"

"To fulfill my mission, to make my legend and complete my trial," she breathed out. "They sent me here to kill you."

She saw him reach for something behind his back and she surged forward to grab his arm. She'd been told to meet death with courage, to endure pain to be strong, that suffering was an honor and testament of loyalty to the goddess that had given her tribe powers. What honor was there though in a sneak attack, in killing men who had no chance at survival, and lying to the one that could put up an honest fight? If it was, Emma was determined for her honor to be different, to actually be more than just lip service to justify murder. If he would kill her, it would not be with deception on his mind. She'd meet it head on, her way.

"Wait, before we do this," she stated in a rush, wanting him to understand, to see her as she wanted to be seen, "I don't… I… I don't want to kill you. I don't want to kill anyone. Please, just hear me out. I'll tell you everything, and then what comes next, I'll do you proud. I'll fight you as a warrior and it'll be a battle worth telling tales of… but I want you to know everything first."

"Do me proud. The hell are you talking about, kid?" he asked her. He lowered his arm, gun in hand and she took a deep breath. She'd chosen her path. Maybe it would take her from the waters and maybe she would drown in them, but she would meet it one way or the other. Hesitating though she did, she would meet this no matter what it meant.

"I have a weapon on me, a knife. If you let me in, give me five minutes to explain, I'll hand it over now. What we do afterward is up to you," she promised him. "I know you have no reason to trust me, but please… I need you to understand."

He gave her a long look, studying her. It made her feel bare and exposed, scared despite herself. It was a feeling she had experienced with her teachers but she was terrified now instead of just uncomfortable and unsure. Honor and tradition could only steel your nerves so hard.

"Alright," he eventually said. "Come in and put your weapon on the floor and kick it away."

She nodded and stepped inside, pulling her luggage in with her. Holding one hand out in the air, she pulled the blade from her pants and slowly put it to the floor before nudging it away and taking a step back. It wasn't a kick, but she didn't feel right about mistreating the weapon. She'd been told it had been her mother's, had been the blade that dealt the first kill for Lydia's own father. Kicking an ancestral weapon, even with such a history, she couldn't do it.

"Okay, start talking," he said. He didn't raise his gun on her, but he didn't let it go either. The teen found herself hoping desperately he would respect her move of honor and meet her halfway if this came down to the fight.

"I don't know how much you know, but I'm an Amazon. My tribe mates with men and we grow quickly. That baby you met earlier? That was me," she told him.

"Yeah, I had a feeling about that," he admitted. "Puberty must have been a bitch."

She felt confused by his statement. Was he making a joke? She'd been told hunters were merciless, killed their kind without hesitation. Once he knew what she was, she hadn't expected anything like this.

"We're taken in and taught, learn fast and are encouraged through combat and torture to become strong," she continued, because she didn't know what else to say.

"Torture?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied softly before she showed him her arm. The mark was still red, still angry and painful. "They told us we had to endure pain, to be strong like them, but I don't want to be like them. I never did. I did what they told me because I didn't know any other way. They told me about you at the end, that you were a hunter, that you'd be a hard kill. I was supposed to come here, tell you a story how they hurt me and ask you to steal me away but… I can't."

Something in his expression changed as he saw the burn, his eyes softening slightly. Unlike the harsh look of disappointment whenever she displayed weakness she had seen from her teachers, this was nothing like that. Was it pity or something else?

"Why tell me all this?"

"Because they told me if you knew the truth, you'd kill me without hesitation. They told me hunters don't have any mercy for our kind, that they view us as monsters, that you'd view me as a monster. Unless I came to you asking for help, you'd never even allow me past the front door, and that my only chance was to take you by surprise," she informed him. "But if I kill you like that, if I tricked you, it wouldn't be right. You'd think of me as a monster in the end and I don't want that. I don't want my father to think of me like that."

"Okay… right, okay," he breathed out. "So then what do you want?"

"I want… I want someone to remember me," she confessed. "I want someone to think of me and be proud. My mom won't. If I fail she'll just go and breed with someone else, have another daughter. She'll only love me if I do as she did, find men, have children and hand them over to continue the traditions. You… you don't even want me-"

"Okay, let's not… go there," he said with a shaky sigh. "It's not a matter of… You know this isn't a normal situation, right?"

"How would I know what normal is?" she asked him. "Normal to me is having a whole life in a couple days, of getting only a few lessons on how to handle a weapon and suddenly being an expert with it, on being told pain and honor is all that matters and men are just things to use and then kill. They speak of honor and then tell us to sneak up on our prey and slaughter them like animals, and they think I'm weak because they see it in my eyes that I don't want to. That in my head, I question. To them, men aren't people but the very first interaction I had with one, it was you and you… you..."

She covered her mouth with her hands and took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. They felt frazzled and raw, but she had to see this through. She had no choice now. If she ran, she was sure he'd put a bullet in her back before she even made it to the door.

"I'll fight you if you want, honorably," she promised, "and when you kill me, I just want you to think I was a good warrior, a good daughter. If my name lives on with anyone, I don't need legends. I just want someone to know despite the fear I faced you proudly."

"If I want?" he asked, to which she nodded. "What if I don't want that?"

"I don't understand," she said, feeling confused. "You're going to fight me."

"Emma, I-"

"You are! You hunt monsters! You kill them! You'll kill me!" she insisted.

"Don't say that!" he snapped so loudly it shocked her. "Look just don't… don't… You haven't killed anyone yet. You can walk away."

"And do what?" she asked. "They won't take me back unless I have proof I killed you."

"You don't want to be like them. You said so yourself," he pressed.

"Exactly, which is why you have to kill me," she said. "There's no other way. One of us has to die… and it's going to be me."

"No!" he insisted loudly. "You're standing there and telling me you want me to kill you. Who the hell does that?"

"It's the only acceptable alternative," she said. "If I don't kill you and I leave, they'll know the truth and kill me. Worse you'll do is put a bullet in my heart. They'll make me feel it. This mark is what they do to Amazons that do what they're told. What do you think they'll burn me with if I willingly gave up on my trial?"

He shook his head before rubbing at the back of his head.

"I know where they are. I can make sure they won't find you," he offered. "I can keep you safe from them."

"There's dozens of them," she warned. "They're hidden."

"I know where they are," he told her. "Emma, I can protect you."

"You're my father. You're supposed to fight me," she denied.

"Hey, you said we'd do this the way I wanted," he reminded her harshly.

"I meant we could fight how you preferred. I thought you'd either shoot me or allow me to face you honorably," she said.

"Well too bad you didn't say that because both those options are crap!"

Before she could reply the door suddenly flew open, both of them whirling around to face the intruder. For a moment she thought it was an Amazon, someone to make sure she passed her test, but it instead it was a man she'd never seen before, gun pointed at her. Fear flooded her, a cold hard feeling in the pit of her stomach that she wouldn't be allowed to pass on with honor, was going to fail and die and no one would remember her.

"Whoa! Sam, stop!" Dean cried out, rushing forward and shoving Emma behind him. The action shocked her, feeling his hand on her arm, holding her firm in place. "Sam, don't."

"Dean, she's here to kill you! The mother doesn't go after the father, the-"

"The daughter does! I know, Emma told me!"

"And you're protecting her?!"

"Sammy, she hasn't killed anyone. She doesn't want to. She's not like them," he reasoned, trying to sound soothing, even though there was tension in his voice. "She thinks she has to die, that it's the only way out of this situation. She's practically asking me to shoot her."

"Dean, what does-"

"She didn't ask to be this, Sammy! You of all people should understand that! Don't hurt her! Please!"

Emma felt her voice constrict in her throat, looking between the two men. He was protecting her. Why? This other man, was he a hunter too? They'd only told her about her father. Had they known about this one, this Sam? They'd been watching Dean, they had to have been aware of his partner.

"Dean, step away," he said, cocking his gun. "This is just like Amy. You said I couldn't be soft! I'd get us killed!"

"Who's Amy?" Emma asked, out, starting to feel herself panic. It was rising up in her chest, choking her and making her feel terrified. The sight of the gun pointed at the pair, knowing her life could end with just a simple pull of the trigger, it was making her head spin.

"Emma, just stay back!" Dean ordered. "I'll protect you! You'll be okay!"

"She's a monster, Dean! She'll try to kill you!"

"No, she won't! Sam, please I know Amy meant something to you but this is not the same! It's not! She hasn't killed anyone! She said herself she doesn't want to," Dean insisted. "Please… for the love of crap, Sam..."

"She's an Amazon. She's going to kill you," Sam breathed. "Why would she be here if it weren't for that?"

"Okay… okay she came here for a fight but she… Sam, she wants me to kill her. This isn't her fault. None of this is her fault. She's stuck in a bad spot because her mom got pregnant and they're forcing her to do this. She's just another victim, one of the people we try to save," Dean pleaded. "Come on. I can't kill her. You know I can't let you do it either."

Sam narrowed his eyes before eventually he lowered his gun. Letting out a breath of relief, Dean turned to her and took her face in his hands.

"Hey, you alright?" he asked her. She opened her mouth to speak though no words came out, forcing her to just nod her head quickly. "Okay, good. Good, that's great. Alright, let's figure this out, okay? After you shanked me, what were you supposed to do?"

"Go back to the training grounds," she replied without even thinking about it. Deep down she already knew what he planned to do, to kill her sisters. If there was any conflict in her mind about it, she was pushing it too far down to let it bother her. Besides, she had a feeling if she didn't spill her secrets it would get this Sam guy pointing a gun at her again. "They were going to wait for all of us to get back and then leave."

"When?"

"A couple days from now," she answered.

"Sam, we got to go now, maybe take them unaware," Dean said, shoving his gun into the back of his pants. "Emma, come on."

"Wait, you want to take her with us?" Sam asked, disbelieving.

"Well she can't stay here," Dean pointed out.

"What if she tries something?"

"Sam-"

"No, Dean! How long have you known her, maybe ten minutes?! If she gets close then-"

"I'm not going to kill my father! All I wanted was an honorable way to go! A compromise but no one here cares what I want!" Emma snapped. These two were talking about her like she wasn't even there or capable of making her own decision, like she hadn't thought hard about her own life. Everyone around her just assumed they could do as they liked, mark her path and expect her to follow it without question. "He was supposed to fight me. All I wanted was him to see I wouldn't attack him without him knowing the truth. I never expected to win. If you think I'm just going to wait for a chance to attack him with his guard is down then you can shove it! Who do you think you are, interfering like this in family?"

The two men looked between them, Sam coughing a bit.

"Well, she sounds like you a little anyway," he said, to which Dean rolled his eyes.

"Emma, this is my brother, your uncle," he replied. "You know what an uncle is, right, or did they not bother with that kind of information when you were growing up?"

"I… I know what it means," she admitted softly. "We don't usually kill more than just the father but sometimes there are other members of the family we have to dispose of to get to them."

"Sounds like a delightful little group of women," Sam muttered.

"Sam, I swear… forget it. Look, she's coming with us. We certainly can't leave her alone in the hotel," Dean reasoned.

"Then what, pull her into the fight so she can stab you in the back?"

"I'm not going to-" Emma protested.

"Adults are talking, sweetheart," Dean said sarcastically. "Give us a second."

A hint of annoyance crept up in her at that, but she crossed her arms over her chest and didn't say another word. They went back and forth for a while in hushed whispers before finally they pulled away and Dean came up to her.

"Okay," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "look, you understand this is a really strange situation, right? If you're really here to fight me, what are you going to do if I refuse?"

"I… I hadn't thought about it," she admitted. "If you don't kill me, I have to go back with your remains. If I go back with the trial unfinished it means death."

"No… Emma, that's not what I mean. I mean, what if you live and run away? Will they hunt you down?"

"Um, I don't really know. I mean, we were never told of any Amazons who ran, only the ones who failed and got killed. I guess if I didn't go back they'd assume I died. It wasn't like that wasn't a strong possibility," she said.

"They don't come and collect the bodies?" Sam asked.

"It's really rare for an Amazon to fail," she explained. "We're supposed to pick men who don't have any chance against us? Just intelligent, well off men. The kind that would provide good seed-"

"Whoa! Yeah, okay we get it. Don't talk about… just don't talk about that kind of stuff," Dean said to cut her off.

"Why? The traditions of our tribe make it very clear there's no shame in the ritual of sexual-"

"Emma! I don't want to hear you talk about sex! You're two days old! Now come on, focus here!"

She didn't understand why he was getting so prudish about it. The whole reason she was here because of a one night stand with her mother. Well, she supposed it wasn't an important detail for this conversation anyway.

"According to the history, the last Amazon who failed to kill their father was over a century ago, and I don't know if they gave her burial rights or not. We didn't even get a name with the story. She was more a warning lesson that if we fail we won't be remembered by the gods," she said.

"I can't say I could see them leaving her behind," Sam pipped in. "Just for forensics, she's got DNA proving she's not human. The detective we talked to was one and it was pretty clear she was interested in covering her tracks. I killed her before I got here."

Both men looked to her, their eyes searching, but she didn't know why. Did they expect a reaction? Some sort of attempt of revenge for her fallen sister? She only felt baffled. He spoke of killing her like it had been easy, an after thought. Hunters seemed every bit as fearsome as she'd been told.

"Alright, we bring her with, she stays in the car," Dean said finally with a heavy sigh. "Emma, if you leave the car for any reason, Sam will… take care of you, got it?"

She nodded, understanding the warning. In her mind the river swept away from her feet, drawing back if only a little. Perhaps there was a road that led away from it after all.

"Grab your stuff. We might have to leave immediately after," he said before he started to move around the room, grabbing papers and stuffing them away in a bag along with Sam. She watched them work, feeling oddly out of place. Should she help? Should she just stay out of the way? For the moment she just stayed put. All of her things were already in her pink little suitcase after all. There was one thing she wanted to bring but she didn't think they'd be happy if she went for it.

"Can you grab my knife, Father?" she asked and she swore Dean jumped at the title. Turning to look at her slowly, he looked down at the knife still far from her feet. "I don't want to leave it behind. It was my mother's."

"Yeah, sure. I'm keeping a hold of it though," he told her, which she was fine with.

She followed them out as they left the hotel, not even bothering with check out. Finding herself in the backseat of the vehicle, she couldn't help but notice Sam watching her through the rear view mirror. It was unsettling to say the least. In all the mental preparation she had done for this, another hunter had not factored into it. Why hadn't they told her she might be facing two of them?

There was no doubt in her that the threat of Sam killing her was true if she left the car, so she stayed in place as they left. All of them would be in there right now, celebrating the return of the girls by this point. Her mother would be waiting for her, happy to congratulate her once she presented the proof of her kill and joined their ranks. She tried not to feel guilt at betraying her sisters, and it was easy all save for the memory of Lydia.

"EMMA!" she heard her father calling, jerking at the sound of it. She didn't even think, instinct taking hold as she sprung out of the vehicle and ran to the building, fists raised to fight. She imagined him in danger, overpowered by her tribe, and wished he'd trusted her with her knife so she at least had a weapon, but rushing in to defend him seemed the only answer to her, with or without the blade.

Only to run in and see the training grounds empty.

"What the hell is this?" Sam demanded. "You said they'd be here for the next two days."

"I… they were supposed to be," she said, not understanding. Where were the lights, her sisters, the banquet for celebration?

"They left then?" Dean asked.

"Ran, most likely," Sam said. "Maybe they saw me kill the other one."

"But what about..." he said before he trailed off, looking to Emma as cold realization came to her. They'd abandoned her. Even if she had killed him, they wouldn't have been here. She wouldn't have been able to complete the ritual and get back in time. They'd never even told her she'd have to hurry or risk being lost.

They were going to sacrifice her to the hunters from the start.

The two were still glancing around when she started to sniffle, unable to help herself. Dean turned as fast as if he'd heard a gun shot, even as she covered her face with her hands and turned away. It was shameful for a warrior to cry. Was she really so weak? Was her heart so soft? Even knowing she had all but betrayed her tribe to the hunters with her information, the fact they'd never even planned to wait for her tore at her.

The waters washed over her, pulling her down as she didn't even struggle. No coins, no memories, no legends and nothing to her name. Just another soul lost on the river, drowning her when she'd tried to cross. The river hit her body, her face even as she refused to let the tears fall. Abandoned or not, she was still a warrior and had her pride. It hurt though, feeling like she'd be swept away forever before arms closed around her and pulled her against a strong body.

"Hey," Dean breathed into her hair. "Don't cry. Come on, Emma, it's okay."

"They left me," she whimpered, just wanting to drown and be done with it. Even her father had denied her honor. He wouldn't kill her, wouldn't grant her even a death to sing of. She had nothing now, nothing but the Styx and it's cold eternity. "I don't have anything now."

"That's not true," Dean assured her, fingers curling into her hair. "Emma, that's not true. You have me. I'll take care of you."

She felt him shift and looked up at him through watery eyes, saw him glance over at Sam. If felt like words were being spoken without actually being said, a conversation she had no privy to.

"You have us," he said, still looking to his brother. "Doesn't she?"

Her uncle hesitated, kicking at the ground with his feet a bit before sighing and rubbing at his face.

"Until we figure out what to do next," he said with a shake of his head. "But she's not getting her weapon back."

Confusion filled her as Dean pulled her along, still holding her close. She didn't entirely understand what was happening as she was brought back to the car and eased into it, or where she was going as they drove off. The town she was born into faded as she watched it pass and then they were on the road, transitioning from one place to another. The waters receded around her as she felt a small boat pull by, a withered grip grab her to drag her onto the small vessel, row her back to shore and toss her back on the bank. Whatever her fate, she was not due for the waters today.

Perhaps there was a crossroad for her after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first chapter. What did you guys think? Like it, hate it, any comments? I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. Like I said, I haven't seen many stories where Emma ends up traveling with her family, but I'd like to give it a shot. I really played up the hesitation she showed in the episode and her connection to Dean. I don't know if she really would have killed him or not, since she wasn't exactly lunging at him, but I think that might have been more cause he had a gun on her. I'm not really sure.
> 
> Anyway, again, please comment if you have any thoughts.


	2. Measures of Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter ready to go. You'll have to forgive the delays. Holidays are always a bad time to start a new story since things always get so busy, but hopefully the wait was bearable. In either case, I want to thank the people who reviewed or followed. You are all so sweet for the support and I hope this continues to bring you some enjoyment.

There had been enough silent, late night drives for Dean over the years for him to be used to it, but he'd never cared for them. He was a loud, charismatic guy if he did say so himself. He much preferred to ride along with rock playing, drumming on the wheel of his baby, talking with Sam and passing the miles of the road with some kind of sound. Silence was oppressive, hard and gave him too much time to think back on all the crap that had happened in his life so far. Noise offered distraction where the quiet gave no such refuge.

He glanced over at his brother sitting next to him in the seat, and even without words knew things were not okay between them right now. Whatever good will that had been in place before for Emma seemed to have dried up because he had been stewing for the last few hours. The girl in question had long since fallen asleep in the back seat, curled up in on herself. She had to be exhausted, all things considered, but Sam continued to look over at her, in the mirror and sometimes even turning his head to the back to check the girl. Dean knew it wasn't out of any kind of concern because the rest of the time he was sitting still, arms crossed and looking utterly pissed.

"I'm pretty sure she's not going to suddenly snap my neck from the back seat, if that's what you're expecting," he said eventually, just to hear himself speak. It would invite an argument, but it was better that hearing nothing but the wind passing them by.

"You are unbelievable, you know that?" Sam asked, predictably rising to the bait. "I mean, what in the world is wrong with you? Have you gone insane or are you really this big of a hypocrite?"

"Oh god, Sammy? How many times are we going to argue about Amy?" Dean asked. "This isn't the same."

"Isn't the same? Isn't the… Dean, you said it yourself! We kill monsters! We don't make friends with them, we don't spare them. You went behind my back, lied to me about it, and now you want to get sarcastic on me because I'm having trouble understanding why we have one in the back seat?" he asked incredulously.

"She hasn't killed anyone and she's not going to. Amy was murdering people."

"Amy was doing it to save her son, her family. Like you wouldn't have done it for me."

"You know what, that's not the point!" he snapped, forgetting for the moment he'd invited this argument. "It was the right thing to do, and you know it. You said so yourself."

"Yeah… yeah, it was the right thing to do," Sam admitted with a dark expression on his face. "Because it's the family business. It's what we do, except when it's your monster I guess."

"Emma isn't a monster," he replied. "She's a… she's a scared kid. We need to help her."

"Dean, you can spout that all you want, but she is a monster. Even if you don't want to use the word, she's certainly not human. Super strength, her kind kills men, not to mention the whole not even existing a week ago thing? She's right up there in supernatural alley with wendigos and werewolves," the other man pointed out. "If she'd been anyone else's kid you'd have put a bullet in her brain and never thought twice about it, and you know it!"

"So what do you want me to do, Sam? Pull over and hit her over the head with a shovel and bury her? Go back in time and never have her, or maybe find Amy and politely explain to her that eating people's brains is kind of fucked up and can she please stop?" he barked back. "Look, I know I didn't handle the kitsune situation properly but neither did you. I know I should have told you the truth just like you should have taken her out before I had the chance to, but we both screwed up and it's done with. Nothing is going to change that, so don't take it out on her!"

"That's the worse thing, you honestly think I want to off her in some kind of sick revenge or something?" he asked. "News flash, Dean, being properly paranoid does not mean I'm suddenly being an asshole. Just because she hasn't tried anything yet doesn't mean she won't in the future. What if she gets homesick and tries to kill you as a peace offering to the Amazons so they'll take her back? What if she's faking this whole thing? Can you honestly tell me you know she won't turn on us?"

"No," he admitted.

"Then why are you being so stupid about this?" Sam demanded.

"Because… because I looked her in the eyes and… Sam, the things she said, the way she looked at me, she was ready to die. I know I'm no mind reader or anything but I could see it. She wasn't going to kill me. She's just a kid caught up in this and I have to do right by her. No matter how she came about, no matter what she is… she's mine. I've messed up too many times to not at least try."

"Dean, this girl is an Amazon. She's not yours, not really."

Dean was quiet for a moment before a small humorous laugh left him and he shook his head.

"Yeah, no. She is mine. Descended from crazy, man killing bitches she might be, but she is mine. I haven't always measured up but if I have a chance to give her something better then I'm going to do me best to," he reasoned.

"So what's the plan then?" Sam sighed out.

"I have no idea. Right now I'm more concerned with trying to track down the others. Emma's intentions being pure or not, we know those broads need to be taken down. Besides, we have a whole bunch of pissed of Leviathans trying to get at us. It's not like we can give her a credit card and wish her the best of luck. If any of our enemies figure out she's connected to us, they'll hurt her."

"You don't want to train her, do you?"

Dean's knuckles tightened under his skin as he gripped the steering wheel hard and glowered out at the road, thinking over what to even say to that. He was proud of what he was, good at what he did. Being a hunter was all he knew and his survival had all hinged on his father's training and insistence he never waver. It hadn't always been easy, and he'd be lying to himself if he believed he was completely okay with how his childhood had turned out, but it was what he was. He'd once tried to give it up and it had not ended well for anyone involved.

Putting Emma through that, putting any kid through that, would have been worse than killing her. Even if she already was part of that world, pulling her even further into it by encouraging her to hunt would surely get him sent right back to hell.

"She just needs a chance for something good in her life," Dean settled on saying instead. "Something stable. It's sure as hell not going to be any kind of training like what we went through. I'll figure something else out. Maybe we can find one of dad's friends, drop her off when things are less crazy. A few forged documents and someone can send her off to school where she'll be safe."

"Pretty sure any of Dad's friends aren't going to be too happy to have her," Sam pointed out. "What will you even tell anyone? I mean, she looks like she's sixteen. You'd have had to have been a teen when you had her if you tell anyone she's normal."

"Right, because we both know I never had sex as a teenager," Dean chuckled. "It's a believable story. I know most of them would hurt her if they knew the truth, but no one has to know. We can explain it to her, tell her to keep things to herself, cover up her brand. She can have something normal for herself."

"Like we didn't?" his brother asked. He didn't reply but the silence was probably answer enough.

"I still think this is a bad idea," Sam muttered eventually. "You've never had this kind of sympathy for others like her before."

"Yeah, so I'm a hypocrite. Get over it. You're still not shooting her," he replied.

The matter hardly felt settled, but neither brother said anything past that. It would have to do for now. It felt more than a little unsettling to know that his baby brother was right. Sam was the one who wanted to believe in the good of the things they hunted if it seemed there was a chance they could be saved. He was hardly some pacifist, and most of the monsters he didn't bother with showing even the slightest amount of sympathy if they didn't deserve it, but when there was even a trace of humanity in them Sam was usually all for giving them a chance. Dean on the other hand rarely, if ever, would risk it.

On the other hand, he had trusted his brother a few times on those matters, so he felt he had the right to pull the mercy card himself now. He assured himself in his own mind if things got out of hand, if she did anything to kill a human, he'd take the hit himself or allow his brother to do it. Whatever it took to end her as a threat, but only if she actually became one.

Sam was right though, about why he was doing it. Because she was, in his words, his monster. Just like he was right about saving Sam. He was willing to put a lot on the line for his brother, just about anything. If Sammy had been dying and going after others would have saved him…

He mentally shook himself. The whole situation with her had been morally gray at best, but he wouldn't have killed people to save even his brother. It wasn't their place to trade one life for another and it never had been. They'd ended up having to deal with a very irritated reaper when someone had tried that playing god crap. He'd done the right thing by killing her, even if he had screwed up by lying about it. Amy had killed people and Emma hadn't. That was the end of it. A firm, hard line and he was fine with that.

If Emma crossed it then he'd listen to Sam give the, "I told you so," speech all week after they handled her.

Right now though, there was no way he was going to kill a teenage girl who had practically begged to die. Yeah, he had enough issues with his guilt to even think about going down that kind of road.

The hunter was hardly a master of his emotions as it was. Normally it was easier to try and ignore it, deal with it when it came to a head and then go right back to pretending he was fine. It didn't always work, but the success rate was high enough he wasn't about to change now. Out loud his policy on voicing his emotions was very strict, don't touch it and leave it be. In his own head though… well, everyone was their own worst enemy, weren't they?

Too much had been piling up and it was getting harder to deal with. Castiel was gone, had betrayed him and he had no idea how to even process it. Despite everything he wanted him back, even though things were almost never simple with him around. He was a comfort and in the end had tried to do the right thing. Of course, it was likely humanity was going to end up as one giant burger restaurant because of him too. Like everything else in his life, the matter of the angel was a complicated issue that was taking up a lot of space and his already overly crowded plate.

He was pretty sure the matter of suddenly being a father could potentially tip and spill the contents all over the place if he wasn't careful. He found himself thinking of his own father, all the crap he had to still process and deal with there. His dad who he admired, but who hadn't been loving or supportive since he'd been four years old, had trained him to keep him and Sam safe but also to make them soldiers in a lifelong quest or vengeance. A man who hadn't been home half their lives, who had made Dean be a parent before he'd even stopped being a kid but who had also trusted him enough to be able to do it and had watched Dean fail a few times. Someone who wasn't strong enough to move on and allow his kids to be happy, but had been a better man than his son who'd fallen to temptation and started to torture souls and even enjoy it while John Winchester had resisted such evil every day.

He hardly had a great example to go by, and aside from raising Sam he had next to no experience with kids. There had been Ben, but Lisa had raised him for years without Dean and had made him a pretty good kid. With Emma it was all starting fresh. He didn't even know how he was going to do this without screwing her up.

After a while it was too hard to keep driving. Sam had fallen asleep and Emma hadn't stirred for a long while. He allowed himself to pull over, driving off the road and past a little thicket and low set billboard. It would be enough to hide the car until morning, in which they would set off again, find the nearest town and see if they could find some trace of the Amazons.

He leaned back in his seat, wondering if they'd have to change cars soon. They'd only gotten this one recently but one of them had been a detective in that little group of theirs. Had there been a time she'd been able to get the plate numbers? They'd surely try and track them to stay one step ahead. It would be safer to get something different, just in case. His thoughts on the matter were numbing and he felt himself drifting off before he opened the door of the car and stepped out, letting the cool air hit his face. He didn't want to be asleep the the moment, knew it would only give him nightmares with how heavy his heart felt right now.

"Father?"

He glanced over at the back seat, Emma sitting up and rubbing at her eyes. She barely looked awake, her eyes groggy as she looked around. He couldn't help but take her looks in, the intense green of her eyes only a few shades darker than his own, the slope of her cheekbones and nose and slightly pointed face. He'd looked in a mirror enough times to know that face. It hit home for him this was real, he had a daughter, and while there were similarities to her mother in the sweeping strawberry blond hair and curvy stature, it didn't stop the feeling of possessiveness that hit him. Lydia was gone, run off with the rest of the Amazons and he was all she had left.

He might not have known the first thing about how to be a stable father, but being there for someone who needed him was something he had perfected years ago.

"Hey there. Did I wake you up?" he asked her as she slowly opened the door and climbed out of the car.

"It's okay. I don't mind," she said. "Where are we?"

"Just out of Tacoma. I needed to rest a bit before we went into town," he explained, but she only looked confused.

"What's Tacoma?" she asked him.

"A city out of Seattle. I take it you don't know much about geography then?"

"No, not really. The matrons, my teachers, they didn't cover things like that. I suppose it was going to come later," she replied.

"What did you get taught then? You know… besides the whole… dad killing thing?" he asked, feeling more than a little awkward about this.

"Basics mostly. My mother covered reading and simple math, tutoring me while I was still growing, and then when I went off to be trained I learned the legends and myths of my gods," she informed him. "How my people born of Harmonia and Ares, that we grow quickly in service to our goddess, and our missions in life while we live."

"Mission?" he asked her.

"Apparently we slay something call skin riders, foreign demons," she told him. "Well, foreign for us at least. Apparently they're different than the ones from our culture. At least, that's what I was told."

"Wait, what? You fight demons?" Dean asked, feeling baffled, especially when she shrugged her shoulders.

"It was in our lessons, but I wasn't there long enough to see anyone do it. It has to do with a war supposedly. We were invaded many centuries ago by demons that can't take physical shape and need to use a human body to affect the world around them. They were causing chaos over Greece, so the Amazons fought them, and many died. It was then we received blessings from the goddess so that we could recoup our numbers quickly. We drove them from Greece, but then followed them out to continue the battle."

"So then, they go and fight demons on a regular basis?" he asked.

"I think so. I was told that's why we need to recoup so often. Apparently we create about ten to twenty new Amazons every couple of years. Thinking about it, if we weren't dying the tribe would soon become way too big to hide effectively. Then again, it's really just what I was told. The stories make them sound like heroes, but none of them were all that heroic to me," she explained. "All I know are the stories. My real life experience on the matter has been kind of sketchy and now it's likely there's a lot I won't ever know about my tribe."

"Because you picked me?" he asked.

She actually looked a little forlorn, staring off into the distance. The trees blocked out the stars, but she gazed up at the sky, as if seeing the heavens through the leaves.

"I don't regret my choice, Father," she assured him. "I just wish my tribe had been more noble and people I could have been proud of like in all the stories they told me. Now I feel like something is before me, something important, but I have no idea what it could be. It's just I don't like what they would have had me do and I can't believe they just abandoned me… but I still wish… I don't know. It all sounds stupid when I say it out loud."

He was glad he'd had her after developing such a close friendship with Castiel, that he'd gotten comfortable with physical contact in the moments they felt down. Before he might have felt awkward about pulling her into a one armed hug. He'd never gotten that kind of affection from his father, not since he'd been a kid, and while he could do it with Sammy he'd hardly been cuddly with anyone else for a long time. She didn't need an awkward father though, someone too used to keeping a distance not to show a little compassion.

She sounded so much like a scared kid right now, even when talking about a bunch of murderous Amazons, it was easy to see her as what she was. Just a lost teenager, confused about life and where she was going. She needed stable ground underneath her feet, something she could depend on, a normal life. It was very likely he could never give her that by keeping her around but for now he could be that rock for her. It was better than nothing.

"It's not stupid. Needing family around, no matter how screwed up they are, it's a common thing," he assured her. "You were strong to walk away from them, to do the right thing."

She smiled a bit and rested her forehead on him. It made his chest feel a little tight as she wrapped her arms loosely around his waist, her light red locks falling around her face. She was hardly some little girl in body, looking like a teenager, but he knew how young she was and he felt the urge to just scoop her up and cradle her throughout the night. He felt like he'd been robbed of her childhood but that was just his screwed up emotions talking. Logically he knew it was dangerous enough as it was to have her around as a teen. He'd never have been able to do it with her as a helpless baby.

"Listen," he said softly to her. "Right now things are kind of complicated. There's a lot of monsters after us right now and we need to keep going. Life with me is on the road and dangerous and… well, complicated."

"What kind of monsters, Father?"

Why did he feel itchy whenever she called him that? It's not like he wanted her to just use his name, but it sounded so formal. A talk for another time, he supposed. She sounded a little too lost to be dictating her titles for him. Let her use what she was comfortable with.

"Leviathans. They're creatures from purgatory. Eat people, and they're kind of trying to take over the country right now," he said. "Probably the whole planet unless we can stop them, and while we're hunting them, they're hunting us. We're trying to figure out a way to stop them but it's been a bumpy… it's been a screwed up job so far."

"So you don't want me here, to keep out from underfoot?" she guessed.

"No, nearby is right where I need you for now," he informed her. "So I can make sure you're safe. I mean it, Emma. I am going to protect you, from Amazons or Leviathans or anything else that tries to get you, but to do that I'm going to need some things from you, okay?"

He didn't want to phrase it like an order, didn't want to do the 'my way or the highway' stuff his father always had. Back then it had been enough to get an order and Dean would follow it. The couple of times he'd screwed up had taught him that doing what he was told was all he needed, and he'd leaped at any chance impress his father by being the good, obedient little soldier. While he would need Emma to do what she was told, he didn't want to turn her into that. Explaining to her the dangers would have to be enough.

She nodded her head though, showing she understood. He wondered how much that had to do with her realizing how serious the situation was or just how instilled taking orders was for her. He doubted the Amazons had left much room for arguing when she'd been with them.

"For now just do as I ask. We pretty much stay in hotel rooms so when Sam and I are out I'll need you to stay put. We've been switching phones a lot too but I'll give you a list of numbers in case of emergency you can memorize and then get rid of. I'm going to probably have to leave you on your own a lot so I need to know you can handle things by yourself," he explained. "Once it's all over, we'll go from there."

"So I won't be staying around?" she asked, to which he looked down at the ground. She'd just been abandoned by her tribe and he didn't want her to feel like she was unwanted, but there was some cold hard truths to face. He'd lost people before, some of them he'd been able to handle and a lot of them he was still struggling with. His own daughter on the list? Yeah, he knew for sure he didn't need that kind of crap. He took care of Sam by keeping him close. He'd die and kill for his little brother, but Emma? It'd be better off for her to be elsewhere, somewhere safe where she could just not have to worry about all of this and he wouldn't have to worry about her.

"It'll be better in the long run if you find your own path," he informed her, finding it easier to say with a phrase that didn't make it sound like it was about ditching her, and more looking to the future. "Until then though, I'll stick around to make sure you're okay."

She was quiet for a moment before she nodded her head. How accepting she was of his words wasn't readily apparent but he'd have to accept that. Blood relation or not he didn't know her well enough to get the cues of her personality just yet. He'd have to learn that, learn about her and how she ticked.

Of course, as lost as she said she felt, he had a feeling she had to learn about herself too.

He had no delusions about this. He was hardly father of the year material, but he could try to do right by her. When she figured it all out, when she was secure and safe and things could just slow down in the world for a few minutes then it would work out. He'd get her somewhere good for her and she could move on from having a crazy killer mom and a hunter dad and just be normal.

Dean Winchester saved people, hunted the bad things in the dark, killed those that chewed up humans and spit them back out again. On the other hand though, Dean Winchester was broken, flawed and had way too much on his shoulders to the point where it would surely crush him one day. He made it by keeping himself busy, by reminding himself that Sammy needed him and the world had to be saved. His responsibilities kept him sane but could also just as easily wear him down.

Emma would not turn into that, not if he had a choice in the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, like the end of just about every episode of Supernatural episode, the Winchester family just gets to sit around and talk about their feelings. I wrote this chapter for two main reasons and it's mostly to address some things before they become potential issues.
> 
> First being, as an Emma fan, I was a fan of the potential that never came about for her and sadly probably never will. She'd not coming back to the show, just the one shot monster that existed to be killed. If there was ever a chance for a child being introduced to be taken care of by team Free Will story happening, that role has been taken by Jack (and sadly to a lesser extent, Claire, want more Claire in the show). But Jack provided something else besides that, helped build rules about the universe, and how the world itself views him, creating lore as they wrote him. Emma and the Amazons have none of that, so I'm introducing some of my own.
> 
> There are missed opportunities with her, the fact that according to the show the Amazons have struck again in season 9, 11, and 13 if the every two years thing is to be believed. The episode ending made it seem like they were going to track them down, find them and do away with them. It wouldn't even be hard, these ladies kill in a very specific way and leave a symbolic calling card with every man they slaughter. Yet no attempt was ever made to stop them from killing more people. Again, see my comment on wasted potential by making Emma just a monster of the week. When purgatory was introduced and coming across old slain enemies could have been a thing, there was no pay off on that. Greek gods where encountered on Season 8 and not once was there a, "Oh yeah, we had a run in when Greek mythology before. Remember Emma?" and cue the single manly tear from Dean.
> 
> Which hey, is fine. I don't expect them to waste time by brooding over every ghost they've burned, but this was a connection Dean claimed did affect him. There was mentions of them finding them only to get forgotten about and while Amy still gets the odd mention Emma is brought up less than Adam is. In a show about the connections family gives you, good and bad, it's weird to see the Amazons have less role, culture or info than even werewolves got and they're almost never on the show. So I'm going to be assigning my own rules, culture and history to them. Some based on legends and history, slightly tweaked to fit the show.
> 
> Second point, and I'll try to avoid being rude about headcanons because I love them, but some Emma fans love to point out Sam killed her in revenge for Amy. This is something I'm going to disagree with. No, he didn't. Sam was broken up about Amy, hurt and feeling betrayed that he was lied to and eventually Dean told him off, said she had killed people and needed to be stopped and Sam agreed at the end of the episode. For all the times he's fallen and made mistakes, Sam is not the type to shoot a teenager in front of his brother for petty revenge. He saw a monster and dealt with her. Notice how I had to change Emma and make it so she never threatened Dean in order to keep the situation from playing out that way?
> 
> In canon, Emma did hesitate, but she was still very willing to do it. She was dangerous and Sam reacted to keep his brother safe in a situation he wasn't thinking clearly. These boys fight danger every day and have to be properly prepared to stay alive. It's a theme in the show that kind of works out strangely. When one of the brothers points out how someone is dangerous, they're only being reasonable IF they're proved right.
> 
> Ruby was dangerous, and Dean's warnings get ignored but hears how right he was afterward. Yet when Jack gets the same treatment he's proven wrong at the end, Dean was just being an asshole. No, no he wasn't. He saw the powers he had, and got appropriately freaked out. Even further for the fact Jack was supposed to be a villain and it was rewritten because the actor worked so well with the cast, so his suspicions all would have been right and led to something. It gives the unfortunate lesson that you're only justified on being cautious around risky people if the other person has an alternative motive, and for the boy's line of work that just isn't true. They have to be cautious even in bare bones situations like ghost hunting, never mind end of the world crap they face every season now.
> 
> So no, it is not a revenge thing and there will be no Sam bashing. He won't latch onto his niece as quickly but he will be more willing to try than he was in the show. For anyone looking for an unreasonably, petty brother unable to move on from the fox girl he kissed once and getting karma reaped on him for his distrust, you will not get it here. I look to write the boys realistically and not as unreasonable douche bags.
> 
> Anyway, sorry if that got a bit ranty there. Thank you for reading and I'll see you all next chapter.


	3. Sidelines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third chapter! I've been rewatching season 7 to refresh my memory on everything that happened and… oh boy, I had forgotten how choppy and weird it could be at times. I've seen a lot of fan dis on this season and I know why, but it's still kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. Anti-climatic it might have been, all over the place that it was, it's very bad habit of introducing potentially interesting characters only for them to disappear the second they stopped helping the plot, I still kind of like watching it, though I have a feeling the pleasure it gives me is the same as morbid laughter you get when you watch someone get horribly hurt.
> 
> Buuuuut it also helped inspire this chapter when originally I was going to skip this episode entirely, despite how greatly I enjoyed it the first time I saw it. So there's that.

The backseat of the vehicle Emma sprawled out in was much bigger than the last, roomier, and the seats would even heat up with a push of a button, keeping her warm even if all she had was her thin, brown jacket for a blanket. She didn't know the model of the car, a jeep of some kind she thought, but she couldn't honestly be sure. She didn't really know much about cars. In fact, she could count the number of them she'd ridden around in on just one hand. Her father and uncle were currently standing around outside, Sam checking out a newspaper and her father near a payphone. There hadn't been much talking in the last couple days, at least nothing worth dwelling on. Questions about her tribe, where they had said they might be heading, any kind of clue on where to find them. When she'd failed to give them anything they didn't already know it had died down quickly.

Things felt tense and she wasn't entirely sure what would happen next. She was shot the occasional smile by Dean and whenever they stopped for food he told her to get anything she wanted, but besides small moments of kindness like that, she didn't feel entirely welcome. Talk of putting her somewhere safe, out of the way really, had been brought up more than once, seemingly to placate her paranoid uncle. He often kept an eye on her and something about him made her feel wary. When she didn't catch him staring, she would notice his eyes would often fixate on a single spot, usually a wall or off in the distance before he'd squeeze his hand and shake himself out of whatever had caught his attention. She'd decided quickly not to ask.

Somehow she had a feeling there was going to be a lot she didn't want to ask about before her father finally found some place to put her. Whatever she called him, however he treated her, she felt more like an intruder than a welcome family member. The feeling of drowning had left her, but now she simply was adrift and waited on the pull of fate to take her where she would end up. Not where she wanted to be, not even where she needed to be, just where she would stop on shore and end up in some place she would be expected to call home to appease her genitor.

If she had been in the time of her people's origin thousands of years ago, she was sure she'd go and strike out for her independence by going on some quest to prove herself and find her own way. As it was, she was a teenage daughter in the middle of America and no productive way in which to show her unrest and displeasure.

So she put her feet up on the window, coated with the dirt from outside when she'd gone into the rest area to use the bathroom and wash up. The clean and nice vehicle wasn't theirs and she had no idea if her father would care about the interior, but laying out on her back and watching the unchanging ceiling had long since gotten boring. Acting out, even if in a minor way was better than nothing she supposed. The bottom of her shoes left an imprint on the glass and she moved her feet to make another one. She could hear the two men talking outside, something about no babies, hot chicks or bars. It sunk her heart with the tone of it, the regret so deeply ingrained into his voice.

She'd already told him she knew he did not want her and while he had denied it, she couldn't help but feel there was some weight to it. Whatever he might say on the matter, it was clear he had not signed up for this responsibility.

When he came up to the window and noticed what she was doing, all it took was a raised eyebrow from him to get her to lower her feet to the ground and sit up, feeling suddenly guilty.

"I'm sorry," she said after she'd wiped the dirt away as best she could with her sleeve and rolled the window down so he could hear her. "Got bored I guess."

"Uh huh. When we get my baby back, I expect you to be better about that," he informed her.

"Baby? I have a sibling?" she asked, surprised.

"What? No, no. My Impala," he informed her.

That did not clear up what he was talking about at all in her mind.

"My ride," he explained. "We're hopping around from car to car to keep under the radar, but I own one of my own. It's my baby. You ever get in it, you treat it with respect."

She wasn't sure why some vehicle could hold such importance to him, but the fondness in his tone was mixed with a warning. Feeling utterly chastised, she nodded her head.

"Good. Now onto a different subject. We've got a potential case. We're going to be heading off soon. Guess it's a good a reason to go to Kansas for you anyway," he explained.

"What's in Kansas?" she asked him. She knew the location well enough. The first thing they'd done while still near Seattle was buy a map of the country so she could study it. He'd shown her the different states and the highways and interstates connecting them. She'd spent a good hour studying it before handing it back to him, having memorized the entire thing. He'd seemed a little shocked by the speed before she'd informed him that as an Amazon, though her body had now slowed down to a normal growth, her capacity for learning was still highly advanced. It didn't take her long to intake new information, almost like a photographic memory. Useful considering she'd had so little time to learn while growing. Even developed with a mature body now, there was a lot to know about the world that could not have been covered in such a short time. She certainly would need an advantage to catch up on what would be sixteen years worth of knowledge she'd have normally.

Dean was quiet for a moment before giving her a smile, but it was a bittersweet sort of one.

"It was home for a while," he explained before climbing into the car to start driving. The answer provided her with almost no real information but the look on his face had made it seem like he wasn't in the mood to share too much.

Despite her lineage, there was little she knew about her father. The focus always seemed on the ever cooling trail of her tribe. If they were heading to a hunt did that mean they'd given up on finding them? A small part of her felt strangely relieved she wouldn't be confronted by them again though the feeling was mixed a little with nostalgia that she tried her best to crush down. She'd now spent just as much time with Dean as she did them and she did not miss them or what they'd done to her. As distant as the two men could be at times around her, they'd never burned her or told her to kill anyone. Even if she felt something for her sisters akin to longing it was more for a sense of belonging than for the women themselves.

Still, the sensation of being lost would not leave her, even as she settled into the seat and tried to relax. They'd been on the road for a while now, driving mostly, and besides stopping at fast food joints or rest stops to switch their ride, it had been nothing but a backseat to watch the world go by. She thought about asking about Kansas again, perhaps to get something out of Sam, but there didn't seem much point to it. Whatever it was, she could only trust that it would be shared with her eventually.

It was a few hours later when she felt herself being shaken awake, haven fallen asleep in the car despite the cramped discomfort. Blinking blearily and looking around, she saw her father hovering over her from the open doorway of the jeep.

"Come on," he said as he jerked his head behind him to the building they were parked at, another dingy looking motel. As far as she understood they traveled on stolen money. Was there a reason they were staying at such cheap and grimy looking places? "Time to get inside. I bet you're eager for a bed for once."

"That would be nice," she admitted as she climbed out and stretched before grabbing her luggage. It was terribly light, less than a week's worth of clothing in it. She wondered if it would be okay to ask for some more stuff. If they were saving money by staying at this kind of place she didn't think there would be any shopping trips in her near future.

"Good, get inside and clean up," he told her as he handed her a key and some cash. "Sam and I are going to look at investigating the death here. Management said there's a Chinese place that delivers so order yourself some dinner and settle in. We'll be back later."

She looked down at the key, feeling oddly dejected without knowing why. Surely they hadn't planned on taking her along. Then again, Sam also hadn't let her out of his sight more than ten minutes at a time before now. Maybe this was a sign she was getting some trust to be left alone. This could be a chance to prove she didn't have bad intentions by doing as she was told.

"Okay, Father," she said with a nod. "Is there anything I should order for you?"

"Just get a spread, plenty of meat based dishes. We'll sort it all out when we get back from scoping things out," he said as they went inside. She had to wait while they washed and dressed in the bathroom, coming out in suits as she could only guess was some kind of disguise. Left with a small flip phone to use for ordering and to call them if she needed help with anything, she found herself alone in the small room with instructions to not leave or answer the door for anyone but the delivery.

Despite feeling let down that she wasn't even asked if she wanted to help, she was eager for a bed. Taking a hot shower eased her muscles and she stayed in longer than she should have, washing down until the little bar of soap was practically used up and shampooing her hair twice. Mostly it was just an excuse to stay in the hot water. She hadn't had comfort like this since her mother's house and she was eager to bask in it even if the place did look odd to her. While the room was gaudy with its walls that were a mix of wicker, thin wood paneling and rock that felt fake to the touch, the sheets were soft and it was easy to snuggle into them and forget about everything else. Sadly she didn't have any pajamas except a pair of shorts and a baby blue t-shirt. It would have to do and she called in for lunch all too happily, ordering half a dozen different boxes of Chinese to dig into. It was easy enough to get settled then, under the covers with food she didn't know how to pronounce but tasty anyway. She ate with her back rested against the pillows as she looked around the room.

The little log-like statues with the faces carved into them interested her the most. Like just about anything new she encountered, she'd never seen anything like it before. Once finished with her meal, she'd grabbed one and returned to the bed with it, turning it over in her fingers. Was it an idol to some god? She thought back to her mother's home, a small statue in her room of a woman bare from the waist up and with a serpent wrapped around her. With all their moving, it had been explained to her physical temples and altars were impossible, but worship still had to be maintained. The statue had been well cared for, polished and surrounded by candles with a small silver bowl in which to catch the blood of sacrifices.

Emma remembered how her mother had taken her to the room to pray for success, the sickly sweet smell of burning fruit and the blood of a rabbit mixed in the room. It had only been an hour before she'd gone with the other Amazons to be trained. Clearly the prayer had gone unheard. Idly, she couldn't help but wonder if the precious statue had been taken with or if it too had been abandoned. Was her mother still praying for her or had Lydia given up on her entirely?

When the door to the hotel opened, Emma found herself shoving the unknown item she had under a pillow, not wanting to be caught with it as if just being seen in possession of the item would betray her thoughts. She didn't feel terribly loyal to her father right now, as if thinking of her mother was treasonous. The feeling only magnified when Sam walked through the door, the harsh memories of his distrust of her weighing heavy on her heart.

"Hey," he said simply as he tossed his suit jacket onto the other bed, seemingly giving her little attention. "Any food left?"

"Oh… uh, yes. Over there on the counter," she said as she pointed. "Where's Father?"

He went over to the food, inspecting the small white boxes until he found one he liked and grabbed a plastic fork to start eating.

"Going to talk to a potential witness," he replied after a few bites. "He should be back later. Did you eat your fill?"

The normal, and even polite, conversation confused her. She wouldn't have thought that would be the case with the two of them alone, but if he wasn't going to be antagonistic then there wasn't any reason to start anything herself.

"I had some beef and broccoli, along with some white rice," she said. "Also this sweet tasting chicken in some kind of sauce, don't know what it was, but I finished that one. It was really tangy. I liked it a lot. Sorry. I guess I should have saved some."

"It's fine," he said, digging in before grabbing another box and eating a few bites from each before snagging a thick rolled up piece of thin bread and biting into it. He didn't say anything else to her, just ate, and she found herself staring at him. Not like there was anything else to look at. He noticed almost immediately. "Something on my face?"

"Oh, no. Nothing like that," she said as she bowed her head down. "Just kind of… No, it's nothing."

She really didn't want to bring up his feelings on her. For whatever reason he wasn't mentioning or acting on it and she didn't want to ruin that. Perhaps the hunt was distracting him, forcing him to think about something else. While he arched an eyebrow at her, he didn't push. A hopeful part of her hoped he was making an effort to try and trust her a bit but even she had to figure that was no doubt wishful thinking on her part.

"So, what are you hunting?" she asked him curiously.

"A vampire octopus," he snorted out, shaking his head with a grin. He looked at her for a reaction, but she only stared back.

"Is… is that something dangerous?" she asked after a moment, needing clarification.

"Well, it's kind of weird."

"How so?"

"Because… well, I mean I've never heard of one," he said. "And I've been doing this for a long time."

"Must be really sneaky creatures then," she surmised.

"No. Look, doesn't it sound weird to you? An octopus, in Kansas?"

"I'll be honest, I don't know what an octopus is," she admitted.

"Sea creature, big, tentacles," he explained. "Not exactly native to a place with no oceans and they don't cross over with vampires. Do you know what a vampire is?"

"Oh, yeah. Of course," she assured him, but it only earned her a look of disdain.

"Interesting education you got," he muttered before going back to his food. The comment made her feel like she'd failed some of test and she frowned a little bit. She'd been educated on threats to her kind. What was the matter with that?

He was distracted when his phone went off and answered it, and while she listened in there wasn't much she could figure out just from hearing half of the conversation. Her uncle did look uncomfortable though, speaking of a place where he would get dropped off so Dean could look for girls and a refusal to go there himself. He didn't look happy when he snapped the phone shut, clearly agitated.

"Stay here," he ordered before he snatched up his jacket and headed out the door. Huffing out, Emma fell back to the bed and hoped savagely that whatever an octopus was, it would sneak up on Sam next. Not hurt him, maybe just bite him once or twice.

It was hours later when Dean came back, and she was glad for it. The interesting room had lost its luster and she was starting to feel bored. Like Sam, he dug straight into the food, but when he passed her by, he ruffled her hair a little. It was a new sign of affection but it felt kind of nice so she didn't object.

"You know what, Emma? Kids can be really weird," he said as he ate, to which she raised an eyebrow. "I mean, not like… you level weird. Just overactive imagination weird. Things they think up just surprises the heck out of me sometimes."

"Father, you kill monsters for a living," she informed him. "Does this have to do with the octopus that Uncle mentioned?"

"Not exactly. Turned out both kids were at a party, and somehow both of them have parents who got ganked. This morning apparently a guy got killed and when I asked his son about it, he drew me a picture of a unicorn. Do you-"

"I know what a unicorn is," she snapped, starting to get irritated.

"What got into you?" he asked, seemingly unimpressed with the attitude.

"Nothing," she grumbled. "So was his father killed by a unicorn?"

"Looks like it."

"Well, unicorns are usually symbols of sexual purity, prefer maidens mostly. It doesn't make much sense one would go after a father," she mused before brightening up. "As a virgin, I could probably track it down for you."

"What?" he asked her.

"I've never been with a man, so I have a chance of being able to find it," she said sincerely. "You'd never be able to even get close."

"Okay, first off what's with you talking about sex so easily?" he asked. "Shouldn't you have a bit of, you know, shame on that?"

"Wow. That's not hypocritical at all," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "You had a one night stand with a woman you didn't even know and are now talking to the literal proof of that fact. I think you can get over me saying the naughty S word."

"Whatever. Anyway, it killed a man who clearly had kids so I don't think the whole maiden thing is really a factor. Besides, it doesn't fit the bill of the first killing. Something else is going on here," he reasoned. "Even if that wasn't the case, I'm not going to have you go around chasing killer unicorns, okay?"

"Why?" she asked him. "I could be helpful, you know. I'm strong and I have been taught how to fight. I could prove useful to you in all of this."

"Because it's dangerous," he informed her. "I don't want you to get hurt. You have a chance for something more than all… this. You can chose a better life than this."

"You chose this life," she reasoned. "Why can't I?"

He paused and sighed, shaking his head.

"I didn't pick anything, Emma. I was thrown into this life without a single person asking me if it's what I wanted. Kansas is where I was born. In fact Sam and I lived in a town less than three hours drive from here. When I was a kid something real bad happened. The kind of bad thing a child shouldn't see or be told about. My father saw it first hand and it changed him. He raised me to fight the things in the shadows and I did what I was told, like a good son, but it changed me too. I can't have a normal life now, too used to it all. I did my first hunt, had my first kill when I was seven, okay? I'm not about to do that to you, ever."

"You resent your father for teaching you to hunt?" she asked softly.

"Resent? Not exactly but… well, it was never an option to say no."

"So to make up for that, you'll take away my option to say yes?"

He gave her a hard look, as if her question had taken him off guard. Sighing deeply, he just went back to his food.

"Trust me, you'll be better off pretending none of this crap is real and being normal," he assured her.

She didn't really believe him, didn't think it was entirely fair, but she said nothing else on the matter. Whatever had happened when he'd been a child had been a horrible thing and she didn't want to come off as offensive by arguing about it. Whatever it was he didn't want to talk about it. Instead she drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The matter seemed dropped anyway, so she just watched him eat.

She wanted to ask him if he was really sure he wanted her but the words caught in her throat. Maybe he was saying those things because he wanted to be rid of her. It didn't mean she wanted to ask though and instead just sat there until Sam came back, looking uncomfortable beyond belief.

When the two began to talk about some restaurant kids were going to and drawing their worst fears that were somehow killing their parents, she forced herself to tune them out. If she wasn't going to be allowed to help, she didn't want to hear about it. Besides, kids doing in their parents did not really sit well with her as something she wanted to listen to anyway. Whatever was going on with the hunt, she wasn't invited to partake and she didn't want to think about it. So when they left to continue their investigation, she gave them a mumbled, "Bye," and buried herself under the blankets.

The next day went the same way. Further instructions to wait for the two of them and given the leftovers of the Chinese food for breakfast. Feeling grumpy, she chewed on the cold food and thought her situation over.

Obedience had been instilled in her early by her sisters, and it had never set well with her, but she'd known not to risk it. Until she'd seen her father during her trial, away from the tribe, she'd never had the courage to fight back. Thoughts of rebellion bubbled up in her head, thinking of going out and trying to help with the hunt but what good would it really do? Even if she found something that explained everything that was happening, she didn't see Dean being very happy about it. His instructions were clear. Don't leave, don't get in the way, don't be abnormal. He already had clear expectations about what she was supposed to be.

She turned on the television before she allowed herself to do something stupid. No matter how she might have felt about the situation, getting herself involved wouldn't be worth it in the end. Cooped up in the hotel room was where her father wanted her, and she had to remind herself firmly she was trying to gain their trust right now. Besides, she didn't know that much about what they were hunting anyway. Whatever an octopus was, it had to be pretty bad if was on the same magical level as a unicorn.

Her mind drifted as she watched some cartoons, wondering over what Dean had said. Had this state really been their home? Was there a sense of nostalgia here for him despite whatever bad thing had happened? Did he miss it like she would sometime miss her sisters or had any good memories been lost in the tragedy that had changed his life? What was it that had happened and where was Dean's father, her grandfather in all this? Was he off hunting something else? Had he retired? Died maybe? There was so much she didn't know about her family. Her tribe had sat her down and explained everything to her, what she was, who they expected her to be but so far the two men had been tight lipped about anything on her heritage she'd inherited from them.

As much as she hated it, as unfair as it all felt, she knew she had to do as she was told. Chaffing under the rules might not be fulfilling but it was best for now. Maybe if she waited a while, just kept talking to her father about it he would eventually relent and allow her some freedom and to help. She was a warrior after all. It was literally what she'd been built for. It's not like he was trying to get rid of her right now after all, but if she went off half-cocked he might just change his mind on that. Last thing she wanted was for him to decide she wasn't worth the trouble and dump her somewhere.

Still, she hoped he appreciated her obedience. It didn't feel terribly great right now.

Her patience, such as it was, was rewarded at the end of the day. After sitting around for hours with nothing to do but let the television show her program after program, the door opened suddenly as both members of her family walked in. The sight was odd to say the least, Sam covered in glitter and Dean laughing about it.

"What happened?" she asked, the sight utterly baffling to her.

"Clowns," Sam muttered. "I hate clowns."

"What's a-"

"Men in bright clothes that apparently explode into glitter," he told her shortly, causing her eyes to go wide. "Laugh a lot, generally terrifying and can give one hell of a beating."

"Uh… alright?" she asked, feeling unsure how to even react to that.

"Don't worry about it, Emma. Sammy just had a bit of shock therapy. He'll be fine," Dean said, still snickering. "We got the son of a bitch though. Some psycho using little kid's fear to off their parents if he felt they weren't being good enough to them. Sam got the crap kicked out of him while I took out the guy creating the monsters. Case closed."

"So what now then?" she asked.

"Now I take a hot shower and get some laundry done," Sam groaned out. "Get whatever you need washed put over by the door. I'll get it cleaned up all at the same time. After that I need some dinner. Anything but pizza though."

"No, I meant where do we go from here? Do we stick around for a while, leave?"

"We'll probably check out come morning, look into some more papers, find the next thing. Also been a couple days. Maybe we'll have more luck finding out something on the Leviathans. We never stayed in one place for long anyway, but right now is imperative to keep moving more than anything," Dean explained.

"Right," she said as she fell back to the bed and blew some hair out of her face. Her world was increasingly becoming smaller, the back of cars and hotels. It was going to be a long trip, she could tell.

On the bright side, at least she wasn't covered in what looked to be a bucket worth of glitter. Hunting didn't seem as glorious as it had this morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stubborn Dean is stubborn. As much as I'd love to throw the girl into the action right away, Dean has always been very harsh on letting other people hunt besides Sammy. He makes it clear he never thinks it's a good idea when newbies get into it, rightly assuming it'll be dangerous. However he does have a tendency to try and make decisions for these people no matter how they feel on the matter. He's not going to be easy to convince that Emma can do okay in the field, at least not at first. I promise she won't be cooped up in hotel rooms forever.


	4. Cold Waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back everyone to Crossroad at the River Styx. I want to thank you all for continuing to read this and am happy to announce the first original hunt to the story. No worries, it's not just going to be a recap of the show. In fact, this is most likely going to end up an AU in some aspects as things delve further into the story, while keeping some of the beats the same. You'll see what I mean as it comes, but hopefully it all be changes you like. The relationship between Dean and Castiel are, as example, going to be a very big game changer.

The soft clanking of silverware filled the diner, just slightly softer than the humdrum of conversations in the air. It was a relaxing presence, calming and subdued in the early morning. It was good to get warm food, not quite a home cooked meal, but with a homey sort of feel to it all the same. Comfort food was amazing when you were on the road, feeling like heaven in comparison to frozen burritos cooked up in microwaves and cans of soda or energy drinks. Sam had realized long ago that it was the little things that made this life easier on him, little peaceful moments with his brother at his side had probably kept him from going crazy.

"Persephone must be with Hades by now."

He looked up from his eggs and bacon breakfast to look at Emma, the teen girl looking out the window to watch the snow fall. It wasn't particularly heavy just yet, enough to sprinkle white out on the sidewalks and trees, but she hadn't stopped staring as if the sight was fascinating.

"Who?" Dean asked, only half paying attention as he read over a paper.

"Persephone," Sam answered before Emma could. He remembered reading that story a while ago, back when he'd been a teenager. His father and Dean had left him at a library to look into a cerastes, a large and nasty snake monster with horns that originated from Greece. There hadn't been a lot of information on it and he'd had to look around a lot before finding anything. In his digging he'd found a few myths about the gods, the abduction of Persephone being one of them. "She's the goddess of spring, married to Hades who runs the Underworld. She spends half the year with him and half of it above ground to make the plants grow. Apparently when she's underground, her mother Demeter gets sad and it snows because of it."

"I didn't know you knew any of those stories," Emma said, sounding honestly a little surprised, but he shrugged it off.

"Research comes with the job," he stated. "Of course, the story is more complicated than that, but it's the bare bones basics. I guess they taught you that too?"

"About most of my pantheon, yes," she stated. "It's still surprising though. I was told about why it snowed but… seeing it for the first time is so amazing."

"It's just a weather pattern, Emma. Doesn't have anything to do with a lady with empty nest syndrome," Dean replied. The girl looked affronted at that, but Sam cut in before anything could come of it. He didn't want to deal with any possible argument.

"Dean and I found a possible case here," he said, changing the subject. "It's why were in Kankakee in the first place. There's been some drownings we need to look into."

"Drownings?" she asked, sounding interested. His brother shot him a heated look but Sam ignored it for the most part.

Dean was, in his opinion, being kind of an ass hat right now. It had been a grand total of three weeks since Emma had found them and so far things had been awkward at best and tense at worst. Dean made it clear he didn't want his daughter to do anything dangerous but it had left her with nothing at all. She spent all her time in the back seat of cars or hotels, alone half the time, and the other half making little remarks how she wanted something to do in order help in someway. She'd found their father's journal the other day and had eagerly started to look it over, only to have him snatch it away from her and tell her not to go through that kind of stuff again.

Sam could understand not wanting to hand her a forty-five and hunting knife then proceed to throw her headfirst at the next monster they came across, but not even allowing her to read about that stuff was overkill. It's not like she didn't know the supernatural existed, and his suspicions of her had started to die down after a while. As many times as she'd been ordered to stay put and do so, as many mornings as he'd woken up and found her sound asleep and her blade still tucked safely away in Dean's bag, he was starting to relax his guard around her. There was only so many times he could turn his head expecting to see her ready to lunge only for her to be sitting around and doing nothing before he felt like he was wasting his time trying to catch her being nefarious.

It's probably why he could see her starting to fret a little bit about things. She wanted to help or at least wanted to get outside a little bit. No matter what his brother's intentions were for keeping her safe, he was started to be reminded a little bit of a prisoner. It's probably why she kept finding ways to bring up anything to do with her heritage and apparently very firm belief in the Greek gods, a passive way to try and remind them she was not normal.

"Yeah, it always sucks getting stuck somewhere you don't want to be, huh Sam?" Lucifer asked, sitting next to Emma, his chin in his palm and looking almost bored. "One big box and you can't get out? Can't think why you would relate to that at all. The bastard offspring even gets to bring the box with her."

Sam glanced down at his dish before squeezing at his hand and shaking his head. It was a nice morning. He wasn't about to let that of all things ruin it.

"A total of nine people in the last few years," he informed her. "Found dead in the river. The last one happened about a week ago, with three victims found all at once."

"Drownings in a river seem like they could happen any time though," she said.

"True, but there's a difference here. Thing about hunting is you need to see the signs and patterns, look for strange things that line up and-"

"Sammy," Dean said in warning, cutting him off. "She doesn't need to know."

"Father, it's not going to hurt me if I know what's going on," she pressed, her tone hopeful. "Can't I just-"

"No."

"But-"

"I said no, Emma!" Dean snapped so loudly a few patrons of the diner looked around at their table. Sam tried to give them a smile and waved his hand a bit, showing things were fine. After a moment they turned back, giving it no mind. A teen girl getting snapped at by an adult certainly wasn't that strange a thing after all.

"Why don't I just pay the bill?" he suggested all of a sudden, abandoning his food to go and collect the check and get it paid for. He wasn't all that surprised when a couple of moments later he heard the distinct footsteps of his brother's boots following him.

"What the hell was that?" Dean asked in a hissed whisper as they stood at the counter. "I told her no hunting."

"Dean, there's no harm in telling her what we're doing," he said before the waitress came up. He handed her a few bills and she turned around to get boxes for their leftovers. "She's starting to climb the walls. You got to give her something."

"I'm going to give her high school and a home," Dean stated. "Away from this crap. You think telling her about cases is going to help her adjust?"

"Dean, I'm not sure she wants to adjust. I mean, come on, the other day she asked us for permission to stop by a farm in a couple weeks to get a live piglet to sacrifice so she could make dinner for us when Saturnalia came around," he said. "Think she's way past normal, and she wants you to see that."

"Weren't you the one who said no to the pig thing?" he asked pointedly.

"Yeah..." he admitted slowly, but it had nothing to really do with her, and more about the devil himself whispering in his ear informing him of the orgies sometimes held at those festivals too if Sam didn't mind his only company being family. His hallucinations could get rather sick at times. "The point here is, she's looking for some kind of acknowledgment. Has it occurred to you maybe she wants you to see her for what she is and not how you want her to be? I'm just saying, maybe give her a little bit, just a few inches or so."

"You really think I should?"

"Just enough so she doesn't get frustrated and go native."

Dean looked like he was chewing this over for a few minutes before shaking his head.

"Forget it. I'd rather get the pig," he muttered before the waitress came back. He flashed her a shameless smile that Sam wondered if he even really felt before collecting the change and going back to the table. Emma gave a dull nod when Dean told her to she needed to head to the hotel across the street where he'd already booked a room, taking the key and walking out the door. Sam wasn't at all surprised when she kicked the ground as she walked, clearly irritated.

An itch formed in the back of his neck, telling him maybe he should make sure the knife of hers was in a more secure location than Dean's duffel bag. He was more trusting now, but he was starting to think she was going to get another reason to lash out soon.

"See? Easy," his brother said. "Least she knows that it's best to stay somewhere with her head down."

"I don't know. Obedience can only last so long you know. Don't act like we never ran off and did something stupid," he pointed out. "And Dad was a million times more scary than you were about laying down the rules."

Dean frowned for a second, looking down at the floor before scoffing and scooping up his food in a box to eat later. He couldn't help but wonder what was going through the older man's head, what he was thinking about. He'd stayed rather tight lipped on the matter of Emma being his daughter. He'd assured the girl he wanted her when the Amazons had abandoned her but now whenever she came up it was always talk of getting her somewhere quiet and safe once Dick Roman was taken care of, though without one word of staying as well. Sam knew for sure that wasn't part of the plan. His brother had tried the normal life once and it had ended as a mess.

"So where are we going first?" Dean asked, clearly not up to talk on the matter. Things like this were always like pulling teeth with him. "Down by the river, check for EMF?"

"Possibly. According to the paper all the bodies were found on the bank of the river by this old bridge. Nothing much, just train tracks. Not even a walk way or room for cars," Sam explained.

"Could be a jumping point. You said the papers said it wasn't ruled a suicide though."

"Yeah, cause it wasn't. Markings around the throats showed strangulation, so whatever drown them held them down. Also, all of them were male, young and probably in good enough shape."

"And three of them together, if they got jumped it was by something strong enough to handle them all at once. Even if one had time to get away by overpowering it, it would have had to go after him and bring him back to the bridge. So either we're dealing with something crazy strong and fast at drowning people, or something sentimental enough to make sure they all ended up at that bridge by dragging them there."

"Either way, doesn't sound too good."

"Alright, we hit the bridge first then talk to the local cops, see if we can get anything on the bodies," Dean said.

"Right. Also, about Emma-"

"Come on, Sammy. Burning daylight," he cut off as he headed to the door. Sam could only roll his eyes as he chased after him. Probably best to just let it drop for now.

It didn't take long to find the bridge, despite it being a little out of the way. Following the river hadn't been hard, even if it had taken them over a few dirt roads. A few houses dotted the river, most of them a little worn looking on paint and none with decks or boats on the river. The bridge in question was cut off with police tape on either side, roped around the many trees along the coasts. Not a lot of traffic in a place like this so far out of town, that was for sure.

"I don't think we're going to get much of a reading out here," Dean sighed as he pointed to the power lines running adjacent to the bridge. They weren't even twenty feet away. "That'd be enough to make the EMF go pretty solid."

"Yeah, and it looks pretty normal to me," Sam said as he ducked under the tape and looked around. No markings in the wood besides age. "Steel railings though. Probably not enough iron in it to repel a ghost though, so we can't rule it out just yet."

"Anything else we know about the vics?"

"Paper didn't release much. One was a minor so details were scarce about him and the family. The other two were just names, Henry Veetes and Jason Smith. First one was twenty, the other only nineteen. No addresses or anything though."

"Well, if they're that young they probably have family around or at least some friends we can question."

"Yeah. Long way to be out in the middle of nowhere though."

"Excuse me! Hello?"

The two brothers turned at the sound of a high pitched voice and saw a young woman trotting towards them. Dressed in torn jeans, combat boots and an old army jacket, she stopped short when she reached them, looking pretty ticked off.

"You know this area is dangerous, right? You shouldn't be out here," she said firmly. "Get lost before I call the cops."

Sam quickly pulled out a badge, flashing it to her fast enough so she'd see the shine of metal but not any details on the print.

"We're on an investigation," he explained. "Chicago Police Department, cold case specialists. I'm Detective Roeser and this is my partner, Detective Bouchard."

"Wait… like the members of Blue Oyster Cult?" she asked, looking confused.

"Bit of a joke back at the precinct," Dean covered immediately. "Chief is a big classic rock fan. Thought it was funny to pair us up. Anyway, who are you?"

"Amy, Amy Franks," she replied after a moment, pulling the jacket tighter around herself and brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Sorry, I thought you were just curious jerks. Wouldn't be the first ones to wander down here ever since… well, I guess you know."

"The drownings. You've gotten a lot of people down here then?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Sight seeing dirt bags," she muttered before pointing to a brick house just a ways off. "I live over there and I've seen a few of them come by, wanting to take a look at the stupid bridge. It's been bad enough with the cops hassling me, I got to watch out for stupid kids falling in so I don't get accused of pushing them too."

Dean and Sam exchanged a look. What did she mean by that? Was she a suspect?

"Well, we're just trying to touch on all the bases," Dean replied. "Why don't you tell us what you told them? Maybe we can clear all this up."

She seemed hesitant at first before her shoulders drooped and she nodded her head.

"Yeah, I guess," she said with a subdued tone. "The guys, we're all friends. Henry started up a band a couple months ago, said it would be fun to try our hand at. Something cool to do on weekends between classes."

"Classes? For college?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, well no. I mean, Henry and I go to the community college, but Jason and Mike are still both in high school. Well… they were still in school. We all met at this local music class. It's really cool, this older guy has this place where he teaches kids how to play music. Classes all day, young kids in the morning, private lessons and then in the afternoon mostly runs an after school thing. Mostly rock and roll, but does some classical instruments for prep parents who want their kids to play violin and junk to get into Harvard. Most of it's pretty cool though. Henry and I met up there like a year ago and after we bumped into Mike and Jason when they enrolled. Teach said we really had talent, so we thought… you know, why not? Not a lot of places to play around here but it could be fun. Just to say we tried," she said before she rubbed her hands on her pants.

"Thing is, we needed a place to practice and we used to over at the music hall, since there's usually not classes on the weekends but Teach started keeping it closed, wouldn't let anyone in. We had it planned though to start over at my place so there would be no parents and no one to call in the middle of the night to complain about the noise. Not a lot of people out here so we figured it'd be great. They came over Friday and we set up, played for a while and then ate some dinner. Plan was to make a weekend sleep over for it and if it worked out we thought we could do it on the regular."

"So your parents aren't here right now?"

"Nah, they live in the city," she explained. "My great aunt and uncle actually own the place, but they hate the cold these days. Moved to Florida a few years ago and told me I could stay here as long as I kept it clean for when they came back for holidays. Community college is just cheaper than semesters in Chicago, you know?"

"Oh yeah. Chicago will chew through you wallet like crazy," Dean said with a well practiced chuckle of relatablity. "Smart move."

"Yeah, I thought so," she said, frowning a little. "But then… I wake up and the guys are leaving. I heard them moving around downstairs where they were bunking so I thought they were raiding the fridge or something, but when I went down there, they were leaving the house… still in their freaking pajamas. I couldn't figure out where they were going and when I called out to them they just kept walking, didn't answer or anything. I followed and..."

"And what?" Sam urged. "What happened?"

"The cops think I'm lying, but I'm not. I swear I'm not. There was some chick there! Out on the bridge, and she was completely naked! The guys went to her. I don't know why. It's like they were sleep walking or something, and she just grabbed them all of a sudden and pulled them into the water. I ran to call 911 but by the time they got here..."

She hiccuped a bit and shook her head. A small sniffle escaped her and she licked at her lips, trying to calm down.

"I think the only reason they haven't arrested me yet is cause Mom and Dad are both lawyers. Not big ones or anything, but they're already making calls to get me a good defense attorney. Police probably don't want to risk losing out on a conviction by bungling the investigation, but I've been pulled in for questioning like three times now already. I just keep telling them the same thing. Guess that's why you're here, huh? Gonna throw the book at me?"

"No, we just want to find out what happened," Sam assured her. "This woman you saw, how close did you get to her? Before you ran away?"

"Not close, just about halfway from the house before I saw her. I was more shocked than anything. I mean, the whole thing was weird and creepy. Like, what kind of woman just sits on a bridge naked at the beginning of winter? I'd have thought she was swimming, but she'd have frozen to death like that," Amy replied.

"Can you tell us what she looked like? Young, old, hair color or anything else?"

"She looked… I don't know. Older than me, but not like middle aged or anything. Maybe like in her mid-twenties or so. She was really stacked, I know that and with long, long hair. The moon was out but I couldn't tell the color. Looked almost green and tangled up."

"Okay. That's great. This isn't the first case of drownings in this area. You know anything about that?" he asked.

"No. I mean, I heard from my great uncle some murders took place here a while back. Drove the land value down like crazy. Whole reason they could afford to pay off the house and get another place down south. It was like some serial killer or something, right? My parents even made me call them every night to know I was safe even though it happened way before I even moved here. Only reason they were okay with a bunch of guys staying over is because they liked the idea of me having company to keep an eye on me. Auntie Eunice put on like three deadbolts on the door and the windows while they were still living there."

"Right," Dean said. "Makes sense. Anything else you can remember about that night?"

"Yeah. That crazy bitch scared the fuck out of me," she whispered. "I keep looking out the window, expecting to see her there. Second the cops tell me I'm allowed to leave town I'm going back to Chicago."

Sam gave her a small smile before resting a hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you. You've been a big help. One last thing, if you don't mind. This teacher you mentioned. Can you tell me more about him?"

She looked confused at the request before nodding her head.

"Mr. Aladsteinn is just an old teacher. Used to instruct in music or something at the high school. Real cool, encouraging, and his lessons are like next to nothing to pay for. Heck, I don't think we would have even started the band if he hadn't told us how much he liked hearing us play," she said softly. "Wow… I actually haven't talked to him since things happened. He's probably worried sick. I should probably give him a call or something."

"Aladsteinn?" Dean asked. "How you even spell that?"

Amy laughed a bit, but it was a bitter sort of sound, like all humor had been sucked right out of her.

"Yeah, he wrote it down once but I ain't got a clue. Why you think everyone just calls him Teach?"

"Where can we find him?"

"Oh, he's uh… he lives downtown, same place he holds his classes. I can write down the address for you if you got a pen."

"Sure, here you go," Sam replied as he dug one out along with a notepad for her to scribble down the information. "Thanks."

"So, what do you think?" Dean asked after Amy had walked away. "Targets men, and doesn't snag the girl the same way? Think she got spared?"

"Dunno. Whatever caused the boys to go to this woman on the bridge clearly didn't affect her. Question is, why did the boys leave?"

"Naked chick out in the middle of the night? Probably wanted to keep her warm," he said with a shrug. "I know it's what I'd do if I weren't so paranoid."

"No, you just go to bars and knock up man killers," Sam teased before climbing into the car.

"Smart ass. So what, you think it is a ghost then?"

"No… doesn't fit. The murders are just like Amy said, there was six over the spread of a few years, then stopped all of a sudden. All men, strangle marks but drown, and all at the bridge. If it were a ghost there'd have to be some violent death linked to the bridge involving a woman, but there's nothing there. Not unless the papers misses something."

"Might not have covered it if it were different enough, but you're right, ghosts usually stick to a pattern reflecting their own end. Let's say we go talk to this music teacher and then if he's a bust the family, see if we can find out why these kids were targeted. Nothing comes up, we do some research and dig around a bit, see if there was some lady who got drown in the river."

Sam considered the fact there was a girl at the hotel who could get to a library computer and look into it for them to save some time, and surely wouldn't be targeted due to her gender, but figured it was best not to mention it. Even if he pointed out they were technically more likely to be attacked then Emma, he doubted Dean would be open to listening to it. The fact was he was just too paranoid about her to let her go out and do anything.

Which is why Sam decided to text her instead of making a call, holding the phone close as he typed out a message to find out where the library was and head there as soon as she could. Dean didn't even so much as glance over, no doubt thinking he was simply looking up directions or some such thing as he typed with his thumb. It was terribly dishonest to go behind his back like this but his brother wasn't thinking clearly.

The younger Winchester was sure he was just trying to be the opposite of their dad, refusing to let her get her hands dirty and called it protectiveness instead of dragging her in like had been done to the two of them. It wasn't unusual. He'd always been more comfortable risking himself than letting anyone else take the fall. He'd signed up for hell in order to give Sam a second chance at life and when they'd encountered the ghoul masquerading as Adam…

He stopped letting himself think as his younger brother came to mind. No good memories were down that road. He'd spoken with the real Adam for maybe half an hour tops before the angels had taken him. The kid had been in heaven before this whole mess and as far as he knew was still rotting in hell, in that terrifying cage. He didn't really know for sure. Despite being locked in together, Lucifer had torn him apart within seconds, toying with him, breaking him in every way imaginable and he had no idea what had become of either his brother or Micheal. He'd been too far gone to see anyone but Lucifer, but it was wishful thinking and forced ignorance to soothe his own conscious that Adam could be anywhere else, that someone had been able to save him.

All because Adam had gotten involved, because the angels had pulled him in to force Dean's hand.

He looked down at the phone, instructions to get to the library and back as fast as possible, before he found himself erasing it. Thinking about it from that perspective… it suddenly didn't feel as right to let her out as it had before. Maybe Dean was right. Maybe she would be safer left behind.

Not that it had protected Adam when the ghouls had come for him.

"Sucks when you don't have an easy answer, doesn't it?" Lucifer asked from the back seat. "Damned if you do and damned if you don't, huh? See Sammy, this is why we just can't have nice things."

He pressed so hard into the scar on his hand that it started to hurt, savagely hoping it caused the devil pain. Even in his head, he wanted desperately for some way to punish the bastard for everything he'd done to him and his whole family.

"Dean," he said suddenly.

"Yeah?"

"Whatever you decide for Emma, even if it's to put her in some town where she can go to school and gossip about boys and never see you again, I'll support it. Sorry I undercut you like I did before. She's your kid so it's your choice," he stated.

Dean glanced over at him for a moment, a confused look in his eyes before shrugging.

"Well glad you finally saw reason," his brother stated.

"Yeah… guess I just needed a different perspective," he admitted, even as he thought when they did find the girl someplace safe, he was going to personally teach her how to shoot and to firmly instruct her to always, always have a sawed-off shotgun and bullets on hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, this was fun to write. I've never written in Sam's perspective before and I've got to say it's amazing. Dean is intense and great, but he's usually pretty stubborn and doesn't change his mind on matters very quickly. Sam on the other hand is complicated with his experiences of wanting to get out of the hunting life and yet knowing he's good at it so it's great to have him bounce back and forth between what is right to do. Not that there's ever an easy answer. The writers are almost erotically into the idea of killing everyone off so the poor boys can't keep anyone safe for long. Feel kind of bad for them after a while, but I respect them for trying hard not to give up. Goodness knows lesser people would have thrown in the towel a long time ago.
> 
> Anyway, if you liked it then please review. If you didn't, please review. Honestly, anything to say at all and I'd love to hear it. I haven't gotten any feedback since chapter one so I want to make sure this is still coming out enjoyable or if it could use some tweaking. Any feedback, even just a, "please write more soon" would be terribly appreciated. Thank you.


	5. Come Sail Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came up earlier than I planned, but I just couldn't stop writing. The muses must have taken a hold of me because I'm rolling. Conclusion to the little two-parter as well, which I think helped me get his out so quickly. Always helps when I've got a part of the story fresh on my mind.
> 
> Also, big thanks to the commenters for the last chapter. You were all so, so sweet giving me your opinions and thoughts on the story. It really made my day.
> 
> I should note though there are some trigger warnings here. It gets kind of emotional with family arguments and some violence, the violence against the bad guy though, mostly.

The music hall as it was didn't fit what Dean had had in mind when he heard about it. He'd expected some kind of theater or concert hall, maybe a really big apartment. Instead he found himself standing on the street looking up at what looked to be an old factory. There was a sign above the steel door that read Musical Madness Mayhem, School for Gifted Children, along with graffiti on the walls, several different instruments and musical symbols painted on the brick of various quality. He could almost see the Cola sign on the wall underneath all of it, though it was rusty under the bolts holding it to the wall. Hours were listed on the glass of the door, but a small cardboard sign was taped to it.

"Closed temporarily for mourning," he read aloud. "Think he's in there?"

"Amy did say he lived here, so he must be," Sam said as he buzzed the door. There was a little intercom that static suddenly came from.

"Classes are canceled," a male voice spoke, sounded tired. "Come back next week."

"Mr… uh… crap, how'd she pronounce the name again?" Dean asked as he snapped his fingers a few times, trying to remember. "Alad… Aladsteinn! Mr. Aladsteinn we're cold case investigators from Chicago. We're looking into the resurfacing of a drowning case from a few years back. We talked to Amy Franks and wanted to ask you a few questions."

"I… I see. Give me a moment, I'll let you in."

They waited a while before hearing the door unlock and it opened to reveal a man in a wheelchair. Despite Amy's emphasis on his age he wasn't terribly old, looked like maybe he was only pushing forty or so with a mess of black hair down to his shoulders and beginnings of a beard with flecks of gray in it. He was dressed like an old rocker, acid washed jeans and a faded ACDC shirt on, though they didn't look terribly clean. In fact, the man looked like a complete mess, bags under his eyes and a clammy looking skin from sweat.

"Come on in, Detectives," he said as he wheeled himself backwards to allow them room to come in. The building was largely gutted, pillars holding up the three story building but the walls missing to make room. Equipment was everywhere, guitars, pianos, amp boards and several other things, organized around on the polished floor of the building, in the corner an area cut away with walls, no doubt the living area for the teacher. "You just talked to Amy? How's she doing? She must be so shaken up, losing her friends like that."

"Shaken up is probably a good way to describe it," Sam said.

"It's a horrible tragedy. Those kids were so young… they didn't deserve to go out at that age," the teacher sighed. "So, why did you want to come talk to me?"

"Checking around, finding out more about the victims. You taught all of them, correct? Amy and Henry for a year, then the other two boys a little after that?" Dean asked.

"Yeah. Great kids, real talented. You know, I've been teaching music since I was a teen, same age as them. Got out into the world and I wanted to share it, with everyone who'd listen. Lots of people can learn the rhythm of an instrument, play the keys, learn the notes, but the special ones… the ones who can hear the soul in the music… that band could have been something wonderful if they'd only had a chance," he said, bowing his head a bit.

"Sounds like you really believed in them," Dean noted. Any other time he would have been agreeing with him, mentioning his own favorite bands and songs, asked him about any concerts he might have seen, but it was in the middle of a case and he'd seen the 'faked distraught mourner' routine too many times to immediately believe this guy gave a damn about the kids. Maybe he did, maybe not, but the hunter was reserving judgment for now.

"It's always a loss when a kid dies, and I'd cry for any of my students, but this tears my heart out," the teacher confessed.

"Mr. Aladsteinn, is there anything you can tell us about the kids?" Sam asked. "Anything at all that might have led them to some kind of trouble?"

"Call me Zed, please," he said. "Last name is kind of stuffy. What do you mean trouble though?"

"Had any of them gotten into any fights lately, maybe trouble at home? Uh, smelly clothes, like a burning smell lately, like sulfur?" he explained.

"Sulfur? What?" the teacher asked before shaking his head. "No, nothing like that. Well… I mean, there was something, but it couldn't have had anything to do with the accident."

"What's that then?" Dean pressed.

"Henry was getting into a bit of a… thing with a girl. He said he met her in college, only saw her once when she came to pick him up after his lesson. Didn't like the look of her right away," Zed explained. "She came in her kicking up a fuss about him wasting his time here. Said he should be focusing on his studies more, attend to his grade point average and forget music. He complained about her just as much as he sung her praises, but boys that age around a pretty girl… well, no matter how bad it gets he can still get enraptured. He even wrote a song about her."

"This girl… long hair, big chest?" Sam asked before the teacher laughed.

"Aren't all the good looking ones like that?" he replied, leaning back into his wheelchair. "Pretty girls all over the place when I taught in the high school. Perfect for distracting young men and inspiring them all at the same time. Course the boys are just as good at doing it to the girls. Hormones are a crazy thing at that age. Kids are so full of life then… it's why it was so hard those years back, the drownings. All of them were students at the school. There were black ribbons all over the place, every few months there would be an assembly to announce another child gone… I couldn't take it. It's like the place was dying."

"You retired the same time as the killings?" he asked with a note of interest in his voice.

"Shortly before the last one, yes. I had an accident around the same time, and it seemed best just to go."

"What kind of accident? Near drowning maybe?" Dean guessed. This thing, whatever it was, seemed to like to target men interested in music if the last three were any indication. Was there a link?

Zed just shook his head though.

"No, was horseback riding and fell off. Rented the blasted thing. New one, obviously not broken in yet. Sued the guy who owned her and took the money to fund this school. Thing stepped on my knee and its weight shattered it. Other hoof was on my right thigh. Couldn't ride or walk after that," he explained.

"A horse?" Sam asked before he suddenly looked to Dean, a light in his eye that he usually had when something had just clicked in his head. "Right, understandable why you'd leave. One last thing, that girl that Henry knew? Any chance you know her name?"

"Penny. Henry just called her his lucky Penny," the teacher said.

"Thanks so much. Sorry for you loss on all this," he replied before turning to leave. Curious, Dean followed after him quickly but his younger brother didn't stop his brisk pace until he was outside.

"You look like your pants are on fire," he joked. "What's up?"

"Nixie," Sam said suddenly. "It's a nixie."

"A water spirit? Well, that would make sense," Dean admitted. "A nixie does find homes on waterbeds, lakes and rivers, and they love music."

"And lure men to them with their singing. It's why Amy didn't hear it, females of the species can't entrance women, only a male nix could. Nixies on the other hand go after men and children, particularly young men," Sam stated.

"Yeah, but how do we know for sure? There's a million different things out there that drown victims."

"Because there was more attacks then just the drownings. You heard it from that guy himself, he was hurt by a horse, and the water spirit has two main forms, human and a horse. Maybe this thing was going after talented ones," he theorized.

"He is older than what nixies usually got after. Either she couldn't get him with the song or didn't feel he was worth her voice. They are vain as hell too, which might be why she went after guys into music. Might have offended her somehow. Think the other six were into the tunes?" Dean asked.

"Hard to tell without looking deeper into their records, but I'm willing to bet it's a good chance. The only thing that doesn't add up is the time span. They don't rest or slumber over periods of time so why the gap in the time frame between the killings, and why leave that guy alive?"

"Hunter might have come through, gotten close and she bolted. Came back once the heat was off and found some more victims."

"Possible. Alright, we need to get to that bridge once the sun goes down after we figure out what it's weak to," Sam stated. "Let's hit the library and I'll look it up online."

Dean hesitated a second before shaking his head.

"No, you hit the library. I'll catch up with you in an hour or two," he said.

"Did you want to check someone else out first?" his brother asked.

"Actually, I'm going to go look in on Emma," Dean confessed. When his brother opened his mouth, he he just held up a hand to silence him. "Look, I'm not an idiot, Sam. I know she's getting upset over keeping her out of harm's way. I mean, this whole thing… how do I handle it? She's less than a month old and already a teenager. It's not like that gets covered in those So Your Gonna be a Daddy self-help books or something. How to raise your Amazon daughter in twelve easy steps. I know you think I should give her more freedom, something to do but..."

He sighed softly and ran a hand over his face.

"She's just a kid, Sammy. I mean, we keep losing people, people we're close to. We've proven over and over we screw it up! Look at Dad, Bobby, Jo and her mom! Hell, look at Cas! He's gone, gone and never coming back! The things that are after us ripped him apart like he was nothing!" he ranted. "And they are looking for us every day. What if they find her? What if one of the thousands of things that would kill us find her? If I can keep her hidden until we're out of the fire… then she never has to worry about getting caught up to, never has to look over her shoulder and wonder if one of the things we pissed off decides to get to us through her."

"Dean..." Sam said hesitantly. "Cas wasn't your fault."

He scoffed and jammed his hands in his pockets. Sammy was right. Castiel had gone after purgatory on his own, gone crazy with the power, and it hadn't had anything to do with Dean. The second he decided to go back to heaven and made the deal with Crowley it had probably been too late, but blame didn't matter. Whoever was at fault, Dean missed him. He'd lost too much these last six years and Cas…

Cas hurt the most and he didn't even know why. Maybe because he was the last one on a long list, maybe it just made him feel vulnerable not to have the angel around anymore and maybe he just missed his friend. One way or the other, he knew it was all getting to be too much and he needed to know one person in his life could be saved.

"I'll meet up with you in a bit," he said, tossing him the keys. "Go on, I could use the walk anyway for some fresh air."

"Alright. I'll call you if anything comes up," Sam said before they split up.

It didn't take long to get to the hotel and he knocked on the door to let her know he was coming in before opening it. She was sitting on the floor, a book in her hands, flipping through it idly.

"Hey," he said softly. "What are you reading?"

"Oh, just something I found in the desk," she said as she held it up, surprising him when he saw it was the Bible of all things. "I just read this story about some garden created by a god and hey!"

He grabbed it and thrown it on the bed, anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach.

"You know, you could just tell me not to read if you're going to keep ripping them away from me," she snapped at him.

"You don't need to be reading that kind of garbage," he said angrily. He wasn't mad at her per se, and he knew he wasn't being entirely rational, but talking about the lost angel just a while ago left his emotions feeling raw. "Just stay away from that, okay?"

"Right… like I stay away from everything else," she said softly, anger on the edge of her voice. "What else is new?"

"Don't take that tone, damn it. I'm trying to protect you," he snapped at her. "You don't know what kind of things are out there."

"Yes I do! I know there are monsters out there, Father! I'm one of them!" she yelled as she stood up suddenly. "You can pretend all you want that I'm not but I am! I'm a warrior! I wasn't created be locked up!"

"No, you were created to go around and kill anything with a dick! I thought you didn't want that!" he yelled right back. Arguments, especially heated ones, were no stranger to him and his family. It never even occurred to him to back off and try to calm down. "Not that you had a choice in that! The Amazons left you out in the cold! They didn't want you, remember?"

"Yeah, well you don't want me either!"

The words felt like a bucket of water dumped on his head and if that wasn't enough, the tears springing up in her eyes did the trick. She glared at him before furiously rubbing at her eyes, clearly angry with herself for allowing herself to begin to cry.

"You don't want me… not really," she whispered. "I'm just a responsibility, something to get out of the way as soon as you can, just another case."

"Emma, that's not-"

"Well, let me save you the trouble," she said before grabbing her coat. "I'm better off on my own."

He reached out to grab her arm, keep her from doing anything reckless, but her hands suddenly pressed up to his chest and pushed him hard. He was shoved right into the wall, his head bouncing off of it hard before he slipped down to the floor, his legs giving out from him. He looked up, dazed, and saw Emma looking shocked at what she'd done. Even as his vision was getting blurry, he saw her eyes, now gold and red, looking like the skin around them had been rubbed raw.

Her hand trembled as she reached for him before stopping and shutting her eyes tight, suddenly whirling around and running for the door as he slipped out of consciousness.

It was hours later when he finally roused, the room dark and empty save for him. Groaning, he sat up and rubbed the back of his head, looking around as he heard the ringing of his phone. For a few seconds he wasn't sure what had happened, unable to remember before it came to him slowly, filtering into his brain why he'd been knocked out. He jerked awake as it hit him, suddenly yanking the phone out of his jacket pocket and seeing Sam's name on the screen.

"Sammy, Emma's gone!" he said onto the phone after he'd answered it, not even waiting for his brother to say hello. "We got to find her! She left… about…"

He drifted off as soft music came through the phone's speaker, a warm and sweet voice on the other end. There were words to the song but none that he recognized, yet somehow they felt so familiar. He reminded him of comfort, like slipping into a warm bath, and there was a story in the notes, a calling reaching out for him and pulling at his very soul.

His feet moved without his consent, walking out the door and into the night, not even bothering to close it behind him. The song beckoned him, filled his mind and urged him to come to the bridge where happiness awaited him. Gravel crunched under his boots as he strolled along, the voice guiding him without rush to come and find the source.

The river bubbled as it rushed downstream, reaching the bridge where she was waiting for him. The moon was already waning but he could just barely see her in the moonlight, bare and beautiful with water droplets clinging to her skin and seaweed tangled up in her hair. The only thing he could see was her, barely even noticing Sam tied up at her feet, not even moving and looking just as entranced.

"Come here," she breathed softly, her voice like melted honey. She was no longer singing but he felt enraptured all the same, moving toward her happily. "What a strong hunter you are. Who would have thought three little sacrifices would have gotten your attention? Well, no matter. You'll both be gone soon enough. Tell me, would you die for me?"

"Sure thing, babe."

She grimaced at that.

"Ugh, at least your brother was a smoother talker than you are. Caught me following him at the library, never even realized I knew he was stalking me in turn. All it took was a little melody and he was mine. Well, once you're out of the way, my precious one will pay attention to me again. I taught him a lesson once, I'll just have to do it again. Cuff yourself, will you? I'm not taking any chances with you two waking up in the water."

It didn't even occur to him not to, kneeling down and assisting her to tie him up, cuffing his hands and ankles together before pulling out the rope. Bending over him and giving him a fantastic view of her flesh, she smirked at him as she began to tug it tight and knot the thick rope.

She placed her hands on his shoulders, a loving smile on her full lips. However just as she was about to push him, she stopped and suddenly stood up straight, looking out at the front of the bridge where Emma stood. His mind felt fuzzy as she walked up to them, her stride slow and shuffling, head lolling to the side.

"Oh, what do have here?" the nixie asked curiously. "What has you in the spell, little girl?"

"Zed sent me," Emma replied softly. "With his love… he says he's learned his lesson… that he's sorry for picking the humans over you again. It won't happen a third time."

"How thoughtful. Didn't realize there was three of you. You know, I tried to play nice, after punishing him the first time of stripping him of his students, I thought he'd favor me again. Then he had to go and get new favorites again no matter how much I tried to distract that little star pupil Henry," the nixie growled out. "Glad to see that he's seeing reason. Mmm, I guess you'll have to go in the water too."

"Actually, maybe we can stay where it's dry. I forgot my change of clothes at the hotel," the Amazon said as her gaze snapped up to the water spirit and she punched her hard enough to send her crashing down onto the tracks.

Dean took a deep breathe, feeling like his head was coming out from above water, shaking as he looked up and saw his daughter stalking toward the creature who was snarling at her, crumpled up on bridge.

"You should feel lucky I believe in fighting honorably," the teen said as she reached behind her back, pulling her knife out from her pants. "Stabbing you would have been quicker, but not really fair. Iron hurts you, but gold, that's what really does it, right Penny? I've never officially had my first fight before, just training, so I want to do this right. You're going to be my first trial, so get up."

"You little brat," the nixie snarled as she stood up. "Who the hell do you think you are? I'll break your scrawny little neck."

"My name is Emma Winchester, your personal escort back to whatever gods made you," she answered before launching forward, swiping the knife at the creature. Penny ducked down, grabbing her arm and twisting to the side away from her.

Emma went with the movement, bringing her foot to kick hard into the nixie's stomach with enough force to tear her grip away from her. Her free hand backhanded the creature with a crack as her neck snapped. Panting, Penny pushed herself up and grabbed her head, twisting it back on straight before tackling Emma with a scream.

Dean had come to by now, panting hard as he started to struggle with his bindings.

"Sam, Sammy!" he cried out, relief flooding him as his brother groaned with a shudder, looking confused. "Hey, you got to reach the knife in my boot! Cut me loose! We've got to help her."

"Help who?" Sam asked, almost sounding sleepy before the body of the nixie suddenly crashed down in front of them, thrown by Emma who ran after her, sliding to her side just as the creature tried to get up and sweeping her foot underneath of Penny's legs to topple her back down. Leaning on her back, she launched herself back up to her feet and grabbed the nixie by the hair, punching her in the face over and over again. Blood sprayed out from her mouth onto the tracks, hitting the top of Dean's boots as he stared, watching his daughter brutalized the water spirit with an enraged look in her eyes, shining gold as the Amazonian knife clutched in her fist that just kept hitting the monster.

Her hand raised as she took the blade, suddenly embedding it into the throat of the nixie. Flesh gave way easily to it, gurgling sounding from her mouth as blood spilled out over her lips, her voice now sounding broken and wretched instead of beautiful in any way. Emma yanked the blade out before looking over at him. For a moment all he could do was stare at her, notice the blood dripping off her fist as the breeze blew her hair about her face. In that moment she didn't seem even remotely safe.

"I'm sorry I shoved you, Father," she said softly, her eyes going back to her regular green, the fierce look about her dying down to a subdued and even withdrawn look as she knelt down and grabbed the chains of his cuffs, ripping them apart before she started to cut through the ropes. "I just… Never mind. There's no excuse for it."

She stepped back as he ripped away the remaining rope, pulling out his own knife from his boot and set to freeing Sam, glancing over at her several times as he worked. He wasn't sure what he was expecting her to do but he felt on edge and paranoid. She hadn't looked at all human in the fight, battering the nixie like it had been child's play, but she'd saved them and had backed down the second the fight was over.

"Dean, you alright?" Sam breathed out, rubbing at his wrists.

"Yeah," he said after a moment. "You?"

"Another day in the park," he snorted with a shake of his head. "Come on, we better get rid of the body. Let's find somewhere to burn it and get out of here before anyone sees us."

"Right, Emma you..." Dean said before he realized she was gone. "Damn it!"

"Dean, the nixie. Come on," Sam urged. "We can find her afterward."

The oldest hunter didn't know it, but Emma hadn't gone far, heading down the dirt road where a man was waiting for her next to a beat up old truck, long black hair that almost looked dead in the soft moonlight.

"You know, I'm not a fan of mind control," she told the man leaning heavily on a crutch. "You could have just asked for help."

"Sorry. Old habits die hard," he explained. "I try not to sing to mortals anymore, but after hearing your old man talking about you, I figured you were my best chance to finally put Penny down."

"So she killed those others, out of jealousy?"

"She never liked me teaching others about music. When I found her, she was enamored with me, she was my best, but she didn't like me focusing on others. I thought if I just went to smaller lessons, gave her all the attention… then those poor boys wanted to start the band… I guess my encouragement was seen as a betrayal of her trusts. Pretty girls are fickle like that," he breathed out. "I figured you were better equipped for this than they were."

"Can't help but notice you still told them enough to lead them into trouble," she pointed out.

"They're still alive, aren't they? It was good luck though, finding a stray Amazon," Zed replied before shaking his head. "There's too much death in this county now. The music feels sick in comparison. Besides, once they realize what I am and how you found them, they'll be gunning after me too. I think it's best to get out here."

"You didn't hurt anyone though," she said.

"You've got a lot to learn. With hunters, it doesn't matter if we did or not. We're different, that's enough for them, even when we keep our heads down. You'd be better off running too," he told her. "Do you need a lift? I can at least get you out of town, just like you wanted before I found you. At least this way you don't need to walk."

She hesitated a moment before she shook her head. To his credit, he didn't look disappointed or anything. Emma doubted he cared all that much. She was, after all, no musician. There was probably zero personal interest in his offer.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I don't think running away is the path I'm supposed to take," she admitted.

"They saw you do dangerous things, Amazon. You're not human, it's tricky to pretend to be one."

"I'm not pretending to be anything. I'm not human and I'm not ashamed of it."

"Well, hopefully that attitude doesn't get you killed," he said before he climbed into the truck, groaning as he pulled his legs in with him. "Well, least this pain leaves me something to remember Penny by."

The sentiment was odd, but Emma didn't comment on it. She did however allow him to give her a lift back to the hotel. She cleaned off her blade and packed her bag, not entirely sure what would happen when her father and uncle came back. She'd acted horrible today, nearly run away, almost had run away if she hadn't been compelled against her will to come back as the nix explained to her what was happening. He hadn't had to force her to rush to finding Dean, worry flooding her on what might happen to him.

Now she felt awful, not only over the argument but losing control of herself so badly in the first place. This whole thing, the reason she hadn't fought him, was because she wanted him to see her as someone honorable. It was just as likely he saw her as Zed said the hunters would… another monster.

Not that she had any right to deny it. In her anger she'd admitted it, attacked him with no control at all.

She turned around suddenly as the door opened, her family in the doorway. From their expressions they seemed just as surprised as she felt.

"I… I figured I'd wait here… until you decided what to do about me," she confessed. Sam and Dean looked at each other before Dean nodded.

"Come on," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder and out the door. She sighed before leaving her stuff on the bed and followed him out. "Get in the car."

She was confused by his instructions, but didn't argue. She just did as she was told, sitting in the front seat as he joined her.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked him. "Your head, I mean. It looked like you hit the wall pretty hard."

"I'll be fine. Trust me, Sam and I know how to check for concussions," he told her.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I should have had better control..."

"Yeah… well, I wasn't exactly making things easy for you," he stated before leaning his seat back. "You're right, I've been locking you up. Anyone would get mad about that. The world is a dangerous place, but hiding you away from it isn't the answer. Doesn't mean I'm going to let you hunt. That stunt with the nixie, you don't ever do that again."

"I saved your life," she objected, but he only gave her an infuriating grin.

"I'd have gotten out of it," he told her, causing her to huff. "So here's the deal, how about I teach you some other stuff? There's a lot more to being on the road then just hunting. Working on cars, hustling guys in pool, counting cards, all sorts of things."

She didn't know if it was an honest attempt at bonding or he was just trying to placate her, but she nodded her head slowly. Either way, she was happy to accept it.

"Alright, in return, maybe you could share some stuff with me. Don't be surprised, but I don't know that much about Greek mythology. Although, there is one thing I remember about it, has to even do with that Hades guy who runs the afterlife. One of the rivers there, it's named the Styx, right?"

"Yeah. How did you know that?" she asked him, feeling confused.

"Well, just so happens one of the greatest bands in the world took that name," he said as he reached into the back seat and pulled out some tapes, putting in an old worn looking one. "And that's another thing I'm going to teach you, great taste in music."

She fell silent as she listened, the sound of a piano and slow singing filled the air, a ballad about going out to the sea for freedom to face life as it came. To her surprise her father sang along, terribly out of key, but she didn't think she could do much better even if she knew the words. Jumping a little when it suddenly picked up, horns and a drum set blared out loudly from the speakers with a guitar. It was suddenly much less slow and thoughtful as it sprang to life and he belted out the words.

"A gathering of angels appeared above my head! They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said! They said come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads!" he sang as he suddenly wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a one armed hug. The whole car suddenly felt alive with the music, sweeping her away along with it.

She found herself hesitantly joining in at the chorus, the only words she knew. He looked over at her with a smile and a sparkle in his eyes, a look of pure acceptance that shook her to her very core. At that moment, she knew he saw her as his daughter and always would no matter what mistakes she made. Her voice got louder in her joy until they were both practically yelling to the lyrics.

"Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me!" they sang together, not giving a damn about who they might be waking up with the noise or that her voice, like his, was not in any way able to carry a tune. It didn't matter. The fight didn't matter. His over-protectiveness didn't matter. Her anger didn't matter.

She was home, and if that home was just stolen cars and dinky hotels, then so be it. There was no where else she'd rather be than right here in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, the emotions to this chapter. It left me feeling so drained afterward. There's probably typos galore but I don't have the energy to fix it up tomorrow after I've gotten some rest. I'm just posting it early so you guys can enjoy it.


	6. Hell Hath no Fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I can not tell you just how excited I am for this chapter. I actually had the idea for this one way back when I was writing up the first chapter but I had to give it the appropriate amount of time before introducing these kind of elements. Let's just say those of you waiting for some Greek mythical plots to show up, you're getting your wish.

Sam had to roll his eyes from the file he was looking over while Dean did his best not to snicker as Emma looked over her cards, her expression a little too intense as she peered at her hand. If she stared any harder she was going to set the thin cardboard on fire. The way her nose scrunched up in concentration was kind of cute but she couldn't have a more obvious tell if she'd tried.

"You got nothing," he said tauntingly before she threw her cards down in annoyance as he laid out the hand of a straight flush. True to his assumption, she had a single pair and basically just junk.

"H-hey! That's the fifth ten that was pulled in our game!" she pointed out. "And you've got an 8 and I've got two myself when three were already pulled in the last session! You're carrying extra cards!"

"And you're finally counting them properly," he said with a smirk as he snapped his fingers. "Pay up."

She scowled and pushed the rest of her candy at him, little fun sized Reese's peanut butter cups. She didn't even have one left, and he plucked one up and unwrapped it before popping it into his mouth.

"Next you just have to learn to stack the deck properly," he said with a grin before he picked up all the discarded cards from the previous hands and started to shuffle them.

"Blackjack might be more her speed," Sam stated as he looked over the bloodied pictures of killed remains of the women they were here to investigate. He didn't bother to pull Dean from the game, figuring the man needed a little lighthearted fun and also it was the deal they had with Emma. To keep her from getting too bored Dean had started giving her 'lessons' as it were, mostly how to con people out of their money. She'd been fairly good at pool once she'd been shown the basics, but card games still eluded her. She was decent at the rules but she couldn't bluff to save her life, and while she always knew afterward her father was cheating, she still couldn't figure out how and never caught him in the act as much as she tried.

Sam wouldn't have enjoyed watching so much if it didn't remind him of all the times Dean had ripped him out of candy while teaching him how to play. He found himself smiling at the memory of it, his sixteen year old brother severely trouncing him at just twelve years old and scarfing down the M&Ms before snorting and giving him half anyway. Sure enough, his brother scooted a few pieces over to her and she stopped scowling.

For a tough guy, he sure was a softie when he wanted to be.

"What's blackjack?" she asked, clearly thinking anything was better than poker.

"Game where you have cards added up until you hit twenty-one," Dean explained. "Not a lot of people play it besides in casinos. A lot of rules that favor the house or the dealer, but I can show it to you if you want."

"When am I going to learn how to drive?" she asked enthusiastically. "You said we'd start on cars next week."

"Car maintenance," he corrected. "I still have to get you a learner's permit."

"A fake learner's permit," she pointed out. "You could just print me out one now."

"Later," he replied before the door of their hotel room suddenly knocked. He and Sam looked at each other in concern as Sam silently pulled a gun from his bag. "Emma, get in the bathroom. There's a window in there. If you hear us yell, you run for it."

The girl didn't argue, quickly scrambling up and to the bathroom as silently as possible. He and Sam had already explained to her they were in this town to hunt a demon they thought they'd long since taken care of and sent back to Hell, and she was not to risk herself in any way. They'd only just arrived tonight though. Had the thing found them already?

Sam opened the door a crack to see a woman at the door, pushing a cart of toilet paper and other such items to restock the room. Middle aged and a little plump, she smiled at him in a way that did not at all reassure him. What was she doing here so late at night?

"Room service," she said as she held up the towels. "Didn't get to restock your room earlier. Need anything?"

"No… uh, well some extra towels," he said before he looked to Dean who had his own pistol out in case things got dicey. He mouthed holy water to him and his brother nodded, immediately grabbing some for his pocket. Thank God for paranoia. "Yeah, some extra towels will be fine."  
He handed over his gun to grab the flask of water before opening the door open further and flinging the water in her face. Which led to nothing but drenching the woman and causing her caked on make up to start running down her face.

"Well I never!" she snapped at him, looking pissed and oddly terrifying for someone who was just human and a heavy lady well into her forties. A sort of beat you with a wooden spoon kind of terrifying.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry! I tripped… uh..." he said, feeling baffled as he looked at her name tag. "Uh… Madison?"

"Gee, that sounds so oddly familiar," Lucifer piped in from behind Sam. "Wasn't there someone you knew with that name? Mmm, what was it? Oh, she was a dog you bred! Remember how she had to get shot, Old Yeller style? Man, are rabies a bitch."

"Ma'am, I am so sorry," he said, trying to ignore Lucifer before towels were literally thrown at his face and the maid stomped off in a huff. "Right… not a demon then..."

"Dunno. She looked angry enough to be one," Dean chuckled as he yanked them off of his head. "Emma, coast is clear. You can come out now."

"No skin rider?" she asked as she poked her head out of the bathroom.

"Nah, we're good," he said before he slapped Sam on the back. "Ain't that right, Sammy?"

Sam didn't say anything, staring out into the night before he closed the door slowly.

"Sam? You okay?" Dean asked.

"Her name..." he said softly.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Dean, her name was Madison," he breathed softly. For a moment Dean didn't seem to understand the significance before understanding shown in his eyes. Though there was sympathy, there seemed to be confusion too.

"Dude, Madison was years ago," his brother pointed out. "Is that really still bothering you?"

Sam shook his head, not quite sure what to say. He'd been noticing things lately, small things since the last hunting trip with the nixie. Little… hunches, he supposed. On the other hand he was being mentally harassed by a demon living in his head. Just coincidences, he was sure.

"It's nothing," he said with a shake of his head before he went back to the file. "Just forget it."

"Sam, when is it ever just nothing?" Dean asked, following him. "In fact whenever we say it's nothing it's something huge. So what the hell is going on? Come on, talk to me."

"Yeah, go on, Sam. Unload the tragic back story," Lucifer cooed before Sam squeezed at his hand. It was worrying him how much he had to do that now, how frequently he kept popping up and how much shorter the trick seemed to keep him at bay each time.

He sat down on the bed and looked up to his brother and niece, both of them seeming confused. Swallowing thickly, he wished he felt touched by their concern. Instead all he felt was this sense of wrongness in his own head. He was going insane, he was sure of it.

"When we stopped for gas, there was this girl who… uh… she started to chat me up while I was paying," he admitted. "Even gave me her phone number."

"Well, shit, you should have said something. I could have waited around for you to take her out on a lunch break or something," Dean replied. "So what's the problem? I mean, you moved on and..."

He trailed off when Sam pulled the paper out of his pocket and handed it to his brother.

"Oh… yeah that's a little weird," he admitted as he looked it over.

"What? What is it?" Emma asked as she peeked around him to try and see. After a moment she just looked confused again. "I don't get it."

On the scrap of paper along with a phone number the name Lori was scrawled out.

"It's not like it's an uncommon name, man," Dean stated. "So what?"

"So what? Dean, first it was a witness named Amy, then a girl who won't let me leave until I take her number named Lori, and now a Madison?" he asked. "Don't you think that's a little weird?"

"Sam, there are hundreds of girls with those names. You probably ran into three or four Bettys and a Veronica or two, doesn't mean you got turned into Archie or something," his brother said. "I mean, I'm sure you bumped into a dozen Sarahs without even knowing it before."

"So close together?" Sam asked.

"Sam, you've been stressed ever since we found out about these killings starting up again. Heck, you've been stressed since before then. It's just getting to you," he said. "I mean, think about the girl we met at the bridge. Did you even blink when you heard her name?"

Admittedly no. It was such a common name he hadn't even notice, too busy working on the case to think about it. Only in retrospect had it worried him. Maybe Lori and Madison had only caught his attention because they were a little more rare. So why didn't it ease his heart to know that?

Emma looked between the two, clearly wanting to know what was going on, but the longer the silence dragged on the more put out she seemed before she fell to her bed.

"Maybe I am stressed," he admitted. They'd investigated for less, but they were already in the middle of something. Guilt had a way of chewing up his insides, he knew that. "I think I'm going to get some sleep. Good night guys."

As he settled down, he heard his niece ask in a whisper what was going on, only for Dean to tell her they were just old girlfriends and just go to bed. Not exactly accurate but he wasn't going to correct it. He pretended to be asleep as the bed dipped down, his brother laying next to him. An unfortunate turn since resting in the same bed as his teenage daughter was completely out of the question, but it was certainly still awkward this way. He finally drifted off after what seemed to be forever, groaning a little when the police scanner went off to announce another woman found dead.

Great, just great.

 

* * *

 

If Sam thought it would do any good he'd have hit himself for being such an idiot. He couldn't believe he'd been so foolish, acted without thinking. He'd let Lucifer in, talked to him, listened to him and for what? Finding his brother hadn't been that hard. Going back to the apartment of Jeffery should have been his first course of action when he couldn't get a hold of Dean. It hadn't even been that difficult of a trail to follow from his place to Nora and if he'd been thinking clearly he would have gone to her anyway on the suspicion that she'd sent them to Jeffery in the first place.

Now he was sitting in the hotel room, fire burning up around him in his own mind as the devil he'd been stupid enough to let tempt him into helping screamed in his ear. Dean and Emma were both asleep, the teenager restless after they'd come home from work to see her father worse for wear. No doubt it would be harder to get her to keep still now, worry over what would happen if she weren't there which was the last thing Dean would want. Things were all piling up, getting to be impossible to ignore. Driving his hands into his hair, he stood up suddenly. He had to get away, had to clear his head, to do something to get Lucifer to shut up. Maybe a walk would calm down his mind, get him tired enough to let him sleep. The door clicked shut behind him as he set off in a brisk pace, willing himself to outrun the nightmare living inside his own head.

It was too late at night for much of anything to be open, the lights off in every business shut off and leaving the streets dark besides for flickering streetlamps. He did his best to ignore Lucifer as he skipped along beside him and did his best to seem as obnoxious as possible. In vain he squeezed the scar on his hand, willing it to stop even as he knew it was fruitless. Agony choked up in his throat, wanting a relief, anything at all to leave him be.

The only thing open was a small diner and he walked in immediately. There were a few other patrons, most of them dressed like him in layers for the cold and with trucker hats on or books set out in front of them. A late night crowd for an all night place, the few waitresses around serving coffee and chatting amicably to their customers. Sam slid down into a booth and grabbed a menu, wondering if a full stomach would help him rest. It had just occurred to him he hadn't eaten all day, not since breakfast and it had been just a quick muffin with coffee as they'd rushed to the crime scene and followed trails of clues on this mystery.

He glanced up and saw two of the waitresses whispering to one another in a way that wasn't at all subtle, grins on their faces before glancing back down at his menu. He had no idea how he always attracted women at the precise moment he was in no shape to be able to handle the flirting. Dean was almost always on, ready to flash a smile with a wink and make the girl feel like a million dollars. Even when he didn't get laid, he seemed to enjoy the interaction, the fun banter with teasing remarks. It was rare for Dean to walk away from any interaction with a girl in regret, any attention seeming to be good for him.

Sam found it exhausting, and his current state of mind was not helping the matter. His thoughts were on Madison, the girl he'd failed to save. He'd fallen for her hard and fast in just a few days, sure he could help her. When she'd been a possible victim he'd been determined to save her life and when they'd realized found out the truth, he'd been determined to save her humanity. It hadn't worked… and when it had all failed…

"You shot her," Lucifer said. "Man up and say it. Own it."

He wanted to scream at Lucifer to shut up, but the last thing he wanted was to get thrown out for acting insane, so he ignored him and forced himself to look down at the menu again until he heard the clack of heels approach him. He risked a glance up to see a blond girl with her hair tired up in a braid, smiling at him, her hand moving over her blouse to smooth it out before slipping into her pocket. He felt a little wary, wondering if she'd had something in her hand or if had just been his imagination that she'd curled her fingers around something.

"Need some coffee?" she asked him kindly. "You look exhausted."

"Uh… no," he said with a shake of his head. "No, actually can't sleep."

"We have non-caffeinated tea," she offered him. "Little honey and milk, always puts me right to sleep after my shift. We've also got a turkey special right now. A few left over birds from Thanksgiving that we thawed out and cooked today, you know. Could get you a plate."

"Thanks. Thanks, that'd be great," he agreed with a nod of her head.

"You know, you could get her number," Lucifer said with a leer. "She asked for this table, you know. Thought you were handsome. Bet you could talk her into spreading herself on the counter, if you try hard enough. Hell, she looks like the easy type. Then again, knowing your luck a monster will just end up clawing her insides out cause you can't keep it in your pants."

The man glared at his hallucination before turning his head away. Don't react, don't let him in any deeper. He kept the chant firmly in his head as he waited for his meal to arrive. The archangel wasn't making it at all easy, but he was determined to get through this. When the waitress came back, she looked at Sam before glancing over at the other seat. He felt terrified when her expression turned into a slight frown and she called over her shoulder to the other waitress.

"I'm going to take my fifteen," she said suddenly and sat down on the other end of the booth, right where Lucifer had been a moment ago. He was too shocked by it when she suddenly snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Look at me."

This was a trick, another trick, it had to be. Before he could react though, she took his hand in her own and held it down to the table with a surprising amount of strength.

"You need to relax. At this rate you're going to burn yourself out. Just breathe," she said to him, her tone now much firmer than it had been when she'd first approached. "This guilt is pointless. None of them were your fault. Don't listen to him."

"How do you-"

"Look, I don't have much control like this, so shut up and listen to me," she snapped. "This is going to eat you alive if you let it. The last thing you need is to let this take over. Those girls are not your fault."

The waitress wasn't herself, that much was clear, but just as he was about to wonder if it was a demon or angel that had suddenly taken her over, she seemed to come back to it, snapping her hand back as if it had been Sam holding hers down to the table.

"What just… I… excuse me," she said as she rushed off from the table, either embarrassed or terrified.

"Or both. Both is always an option," Lucifer muttered, phasing back to where he was sitting. "How the hell did she pull that off?"

Sam was wondering the exact same thing and before the other waitress came up, looking concerned, as did the other patrons.

"Sir, is there an issue here?" she asked, her tone a little on edge.

"Uh, no. No, not at all," he said softly. "She just sat down and… I don't know what happened."

"Right. Well, enjoy your meal," she said as he looked at her and realized there was a name tag on her shirt in the exact same place his previous waitress had palmed, taking it off as she had approached him. Why? To keep him from seeing her name? "Jessica can handle someone else while I serve you."

He jumped up so fast it sent the plate and drink falling to the floor, causing the girl to jump back in surprise.

"What the hell is your problem?!" she demanded angrily before Sam rushed past her and out of the diner as fast as his legs could carry him. Not her, not her of all people, God, not Jesse. He grabbed his phone with shaking hands and dialed his brother, praying for him to answer.

"Sammy?" his brother asked in a sleepy groan on the other end of the line. "Hey, what's up? Why aren't you here?"

"Dean, listen to me," he said, stopping underneath of a streetlamp several blocks and a couple turns down. If anyone planned to come after the crazed guy in the diner then they wouldn't find him easily. "Dean, I think I saw Jessica."

"What?! Sam, where are you?" Dean said as he heard frantic rustling, no doubt his brother getting dressed to come and get him. "What happened? What's going on?"

"There was a girl, she had her name… Dean, I don't know what's going on," he breathed out heavily.

"Look, tell me where you are. I'll come pick you up," he instructed. "Emma, get up. Start packing, we might need to leave! I'll be back in five minutes! Sammy, damn it, talk to me! Where are you?"

He took a deep breath, reading out the street corners to him as he covered his face with his free hand. The frantic feeling was starting to leave him. Talking to his brother gave him something to focus on, something real. It helped him calm down, focus himself.

The squeal of the tires alerted him to his brother pulling up hurriedly to him. Despite no one chasing him, he got in quickly and let himself relax a little.

"Sammy, you alright?" he asked, to which he shook his head.

"No, no I'm not," he breathed. "She didn't look like her… I mean, she was blond but that was about it. Nothing else, just her name. She tried to hide it… think she was possessed for a second. I don't know."

"Alright, come on. We're getting out of here. Whatever is after you we'll smoke it once we know what it is," he said as he pushed his foot to the gas. It seemed that whatever was following Sam was now a very real concern for his older brother and not just seen as a case of an overactive imagination.

They reached the hotel, intent to just leave without even bothering with a check out, when they saw the door was open. Dean immediately jumped out of the car and ran to it, Sam not very far behind. He didn't even need to ask to know his brother had not left it that way.

He nearly crashed into the other man when he stopped just inside, gun drawn and pointed at the figure that stood there, Emma pressed up against the opposite wall and looking terrified. Not that Sam blamed her in any way, this thing looked terrifying. A woman stood in the middle of the room, glancing over at the pair of them curiously. At least the expression looked curious. It was hard to tell with her eyes, a deep red set of pools with no irises to speak of. Her build was humanoid but even a glance could tell she wasn't, her skin a chalky white that was in no way natural and smeared black markings under her eyes that reached down to her jaw, as if she'd had heavy eye make-up on and had been crying. Deep red hair flowed to her shoulders, thick and seeming to shift despite the lack of any kind of breeze.

"I didn't expect you back so soon. I-"

It was all she managed before Dean opened fire, hitting her three times right into the chest and leaving marks of it one the red dress she wore. She looked down before sighing and rubbed at her forehead, her hands and part of her arms covered in the same black marking as under her eyes.

"Can you please not do that?" she asked, her tone annoyed before she curled her hand inward, inviting them in. Dean glared at her, already digging out for his knife before she frowned.

"Enough," she said as they were suddenly pulled forward against their will and she waved her hand to slam the door shut. "Carry on like that and people are going to hear you. Silence spells aren't exactly a specialty of mine."

"Who are you?" Dean snapped. "I swear if you hurt Emma, I'll tear you in two!"

"Funny, I was here to say the same thing to you," she retorted before turning to the girl. "How much do they know about me?"

"Please, don't hurt them," Emma pleaded instead. "It's not their fault, I ran away."

"So you keep saying," the creature said. "Recon jobs, man I hate them. Okay, look, I think we all got off on the wrong foot. I'm not here to cause any trouble. It's actually a job that brought me here. I've just been trying to gauge the crime I was sent here to judge, that's all."

"Crime?" Sam asked. "What crime? Just who are you?"

"My name is Megaera, one of the Eumenides, the kindly ones. You might also know me as a fury," she replied. "I'm a demon from Hades, the underworld."  
If she had expected that to calm Dean down, she had been sadly mistaken. Sam saw him grip his knife tighter before she quickly held up her hands.

"Wait, wait," she insisted. "Calm down. I know how you people in these lands feel about those with that name, but I'm not what you think I am. I'm just here on a job to protect an innocent. You hunters of all people should be able to understand that. Just let me explain for a moment."

"You got two minutes," he snarled angrily.

"I find and punish those who have committed crimes. My sisters and I each have a role we fulfill depending on the crime that happened. One of the ones that falls to my jurisdiction is theft," she explained. "I was invoked and summoned to take the Amazon back to her sisters and kill the one who stole her. I've been following you, trying to see if the crime had actually happened or not."

"What?" Sam asked, disbelievingly. "No one stole Emma. We just took her with us."

"She's been saying the same thing since I got here, but I'd only been here a couple of minutes before you arrived. I'd planned to read her mind and leave if that was the truth," she stated. "She might have been coerced to lie or fear for her life against some threat you made against her. It didn't look good on your end, by the way. Keeping her locked up in the room all the time, I was sure she was a prisoner, but every time I tried to spy on you three to get information there wasn't a vessel around I could use."

"Vessel? Then that girl back there..."

"Jessica. Yes. See, I'm not like your demons. I can't just snag anyone I want, and my actions in them are very limited. This is my physical body, not smoke like those little former human mongrels. I'm much more complicated then they are, but my abilities are also very different. See, I can get inside someone to watch from the outside, but they have to be connected to the one I'm watching, a thread of guilt holding you and them together, and you are carrying around a whole list of guilt in your head over girls you've failed. So I waited until they'd come around, sneak in and see if I could figure out what was going on."

"You were tormenting my brother? What, for kicks?" Dean asked angrily.

"No, because I didn't want to show up personally if I didn't have to," she informed him angrily. Despite her taking the time to explain, she didn't seem to be in a very nice mood. Sam had to wonder how the hell she got the name kindly one in the first place. "The Amazons invoked me and told me about how Emma was missing. They came back to collect her body once they thought it was safe to move and found her gone, then called me because they were sure you'd kidnapped her. I had to get in close to see if it were true, but there was never a time I could that you three were together. You constantly kept her separated from you when I had chances to get close. I was about to try with the maid before you started splashing her and she wasn't going to go back unless I forced it. I decided in the end just to show up physically even if it did make you overreact."

"You saw Lucifer though… didn't you. When that waitress talked to me..."

She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.

"I've done you a disservice, and I'm sorry," she said sincerely, surprising both brothers. They didn't think they'd ever had a demon say it was sorry to them before. Mark that up for the history books. "The easiest links to follow was yours, Sam. Your guilt has been eating you alive since Amy Ponds. You feel wrong for not saving her, for telling Dean about her."

Sam tried not to look as his brother glanced over at him, not wanting to know if he was angry at him now or not.

"I see it in your head what is going on, and I wanted to try and relieve you of that burden. Guilt over a mistake and guilt over a crime is different. I wanted you to know you weren't at fault. It caused me to push the mortal girl farther than just looking through her eyes. If I gave you the idea I was out to hurt you, then I really do apologize. That's not my job to torment those who don't deserve it."

"Oh, but you're here to kill me?" Dean asked. "To take Emma away and fight me? I'll freaking bury you if you so much as try it."

"That all depends on if you've done what the Amazons accused you of or not. I'm a tool of justice, not vengeance, not anymore. If you didn't steal her, then you didn't commit any crime, which is why I was investigating in the first place," she informed him testily. She seemed to have much less sympathy and patience for the older brother than she did Sam.

"I told you though, he didn't steal me. I came on my own. The Amazons left me," Emma insisted, having been mostly quiet this whole time. "You can't take me back to them, please. I want to stay with my father."

The fury paused for a moment before indicating Emma to come closer. She didn't move for a second, before taking a hesitant step toward the demon before Dean shoved himself in the way.

"Leave her alone," he snarled.

"I'm just going to look into her mind. It's not going to hurt her," Megaera stated coolly.

"I don't give a damn. I don't need your permission to keep my own damn daughter," he said angrily.

"If you didn't steal her, then I don't care what she does or who she stays with," she replied.

"Father, it's okay," Emma assured him as she took a hold of his arm in both her hands. "Please, just let me do this."

He didn't look like he was happy with the idea, but he eventually stood aside, though his grip on his knife was so tight Sam couldn't help but feel it was like watching a barely contained spring, struggling to launch out. The fury looked down at Emma, placing her hands on either side of her cheeks. The black markings seemed to seep into her skin, causing the girl to shudder before the fury suddenly broke away and gasped.

"What, what is it?" Sam asked hurriedly

"I… I didn't realize the claim on her," the she-demon breathed out. "This… this is above my usual work."

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked.

"She is yours," Megaera said with a shake of her head. "She did go with you willingly when the Amazons abandoned her. I'm actually glad of that. Tearing her away from you isn't something I'd want on my shoulders. I'd looked into some of your memories over your guilt, but I didn't realize just who you were."

"Alright, stop speaking in riddles and-" Dean said before she cut him off.

"I mean that your daughter has very mixed and dangerous bloodline, and because of that the gods and someone else have equal claim on her fate," she told him. "I'll go back to the Amazons and inform them they have no case and that I will not engage you. If they don't like it they can track you three themselves. I don't get paid enough to start trifling with a child who has the bloodline of the vessel of Michael inside her. Let the gods sort that one out."

The second the words left her mouth, she was gone, as if she'd never been there in the first place. Dean and Sam looked around quickly, but there was no sign of her except for the slightly wafting smell of brimstone lingering in the room.

Sam wasn't sure what to do in response to those words, and from the look on Dean's face, neither did he. Only one thing broke the damning silence that pressed down on both of them.

"Who's Michael?" Emma asked out softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, dun, dun!
> 
> …
> 
> Sorry, that totally ruined the tension, I'm sure. But yes, the little details of Emma's parentage is certainly going to be an interesting factor coming later in the story.
> 
> The fury was fun to write, but I'll be honest I only used the bare bones to really get on with her character. The myths about them mostly show them as vengeance seekers and those who punish those who've committed terribly crimes, though they aren't all bad. Depending on where they are and what their job is at the time, they can be in quite a good mood, more there to punish the ones who actually deserve it. There's even a story where they work with Athena to create a court system of all things to bring people to justice, but let them go if they're found innocent. Before that they just tormented everyone they thought was bad. Go, legal proceedings. So yeah, I decided to make her a bit of a dick to Dean who she was supposed to judge and more charitable to Sam and Emma, who are more victims in her eyes. The physical description was just something I made up aside from the hair which I've been told resemble snakes.


	7. Emanuel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Oh man, it's been a while since I've been able to get to this fic. I won't bore you guys with the details, but I basically took on multiple projects at once and this one kind of fell to the wayside. I'm really sorry about that. I just made a list of things I had to get done and this sort of ended up lower on the list than I had meant it to. I really love this fic and I meant to spend more time on it despite it not having many readers. I'm guessing Emma stories just aren't that big, but you guys that do like it were always so kind in reviews I never felt I needed a ton of fans for it. So I guess this is just a thank you for being so patient and kind with me.

The cabin felt cold, despite the heat being turned on to full blast. Winter seemed to be coming on strong now, and every time the door or windows creaked when a cold gust of wind came it felt like it seeped through just to seek Emma out. Her father had bought her a few things for the weather, sweaters and leggings to wear under her jeans along with a coat instead of her normal tan jacket, but it wasn't helping much. The whole place seemed cold to her, the feeling had been following her for a while now, that numb, sickly feeling of getting bad news.

There had been too much bad news lately. It was starting to make her feel numb and helpless, not a sensation she could say she was fond of.

Dean had told her about the monsters, the Leviathans, but seeing them up close had been terrifying. She wasn't supposed to get involved, just along in the truck to haul away cursed antiques and making a fast stop to help out the store owner. They hadn't booked a hotel in the town yet and so she'd had no place to go when Dean had received the call in the coffee shop that Scott Freeman had looked in a mirror and had apparently been cursed.

"Safe enough for you to come along. Don't touch anything," he told her firmly. Ever since the incident with the fury, he refused to let her get out of sight for longer than five minutes at a time, seeming more scared to leave her behind than to risk bringing her with. So far there hadn't been anything more dangerous than a pair of shoes, so she'd been allowed to follow along under proper supervision. Then when they'd rushed in… those two monsters saw the three of them… Emma had never seen something so terrifying before and had been no help at all in the sudden fight. Even when she'd tried to attack the thing lunging at her father, she'd been grabbed and overpowered as if she had no more strength than a normal human in a shocking display of power from the creature. Tossed through a door before she'd even had time to react, Dean had been thrown in after and crashed right into her. She remembered him screaming at her to run, trying to get between her and the Leviathan even as he winced in pain over splintered wood and shattered glass. If it hadn't been for Sam decapitating the creature before she could get too close Emma didn't know what would have happened.

Her partner seemed more than willing to let them go, and while Dean didn't like the thought of any of those things knowing the face of Emma, he didn't seem curious at all about her. He was more than willing to eat his boss and be done with it, explaining their plans for this place to cure cancer and promise not to even tell anyone that they'd been here. The Winchesters would have loved to kill him too, but with no way to feasibly do it, they were kind of stuck. The male one would have to eat his boss to keep her dead and then there would be no one to take care of him. In the end Dean had pushed Emma to the truck with him following behind, eager to get out of the town and get to Frank.

There had been so much blood in the trailer, so much broken in there, despite there being no body they were all sure that the hacker was long dead and gone. Her father had cursed and kicked a cupboard and had seemed defeated by the whole mess.

None of that compared to Sam though.

He'd been admitted to the psyche ward only a short time ago, a couple days. Hit by a car, locked up, and no way to get him out even though no one in there could help him. Her uncle had looked so lost, so hopeless about everything, laying in the bed in that hospital and just looking like he was waiting for it to all stop while his brother looked on at him and seeming just as lost.

Her eyes flickered up as she watched her father make call after call, pacing around the cabin and grab another beer from the fridge. Dean was determined to save Sam but it didn't seem like he was having any luck and the stress was clearly starting to get to him.

"That's your third one already," she commented softly. She didn't know what else to do. She wanted to help but how could she? This all seemed to much for her, too big and huge.

"Yeah, well I can't drink and talk on the phone at the same time or I'd be up a couple higher," he said without a laugh. The teenager got the feeling he wasn't telling a joke and just looked down at her lap, feeling admonished. "Wait… Emma..."

She felt the seat sink down as he sat down next to her. For a while he didn't say anything, neither of them did, but she leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder.

"It's going to be okay, Father," she breathed to him as she hugged him.

"You shouldn't be the one telling me that," he whispered, hugging her back. "No kid should have to tell their dad that… ever. I'm the one who's supposed to worry about this stuff."

"It's a lot different than fighting a nixie," she confessed. "That hunt… it made me feel like I was ready for this but..."

She shut her eyes tight, trying not to think about her uncle in that hospital, right on death's door. It had never really hit her just how scary that could be, being that worried about someone, feeling so hopeless. Them being nearly drowned had worried her but here there were no monsters to fight, no way just to beat the problem down. Her strength would do her no good here. It was starting to occur to her that fear had to be something Dean lived with every day. There wasn't a moment anymore he didn't look at her without worry shining in his eyes.

"I'm gonna save him, Emma. Nothing is going to happen," he promised her. "There's a cure out there. Just had to find the right info. That's all."

He patted her on the head before he got back up and went back to going over the list, making yet another call and leaving a message. It didn't seem like a lot of these people answered their phones right away, a real problem since they were short on time.

"Uncle said the fury was able to make the visions go away," she stated. "Maybe she could help?"

He glanced at her, opening his mouth to surely say no before he sighed and waved his hand for her to continue.

"Don't really know a lot about that kind of demon, but at this rate… tell me about them. Do they heal people?" he asked her. It said something about how desperate he was that he was willing to hear her out on this instead of just refusing. He had not liked the fury at all, grabbing their things and driving them out of town the second she'd left. There hadn't ever been an explanation on what had spooked her so badly or who Michael was, and the Amazon had not had it in her to ask again. The most she'd ever gotten was that it was someone dangerous but who was locked away and couldn't hurt her or anyone.

She was too frazzled at this point to even want to know anyway. They kept so much from her, what exactly was wrong with Sam, what was keeping him up, who all these enemies were that would surely hurt her if they knew about her existence. It didn't really bother her anymore. Her father had too much on his plate for her to badger him and demand information he did not want to give.

"They're not really known for their healing, no," she admitted. It was probably a long shot but what other option was there right now? "They are three of them. Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera all sisters that live in the underworld. They punish the guilty and each one of them is responsible for different crimes. They used to be just creatures of vengeance, but now serve justice under the supervision of Athena and the other gods, and must prove the one charged with the crime guilty before they punish them. She said herself though that Sam wasn't guilty. Maybe she can get rid of whatever is hurting him. Is it some kind of punishment that he's suffering from?"

"Seems we've been getting punished our whole damn lives," Dean sighed. "Doesn't sound like a lot to go on but what else we got? How do we get in contact with her?"

"I… I don't know. I wasn't taught any summoning rituals before I was sent after you," she said. "I don't even know if she'd come. It's not like we have a crime to accuse someone of, but if my sisters think you kidnapped me and told her that to enlist her help, that might be part of the requirements."

He paused for a second before nodding.

"Get on the computer and start looking it up. I'll keep making calls and look through some books while I'm at it," he said. "Good thinking, Emma."

She brightened up and nodded before rushing to the laptop and tried to find something useful for them to use. The feeling of the cold picked up again, her breath coming out visible for a second but she ignored it and only tugged her coat on tighter. She saw her father reach for the flask by the computer before she grabbed it and moved it out of his way.

"Father… please. You need to be able to focus for Sam," she said to him. He gave her a look before snatching it up anyway and taking a swig. Well, she had tried.

An hour of searching did not bring up the results she was looking for, mostly finding websites for information of legends but nothing about actually getting in contact with one. She was starting to wonder if she was just wasting time when a book suddenly landed down in front of her, causing her to jump.

"Can you read this?" he asked her, pointed to the words. There was a picture of three woman screeching as they flew down over a man running away that looked remarkably similar to Megaera's form, the words under the picture in a script that was not English.

"Yes!" she cried out happily. "This is Attic Greek. It was used in Attica, where Athens was and Athena worshiped most prominently. I was taught these letters by Mother!"

She quickly scanned the book, running her fingers over the page. Despite not knowing the language, Dean had been right on the mark from the looks of this. It had all the information she needed for a summoning and she quickly went to the cupboards to grab jars and candles.

"Do we even have everything we need or do I need to go out and get some supplies?" Dean asked.

"No, everything is here. Looks like all the ingredients are pretty common things."

"That's convenient. About time we got some luck around here."

"Considering everyone who calls them are victims, people down on their luck, it was probably done that way to ensure they could summon the furies. It wouldn't do any good to say you needed the spring waters or a mountain half way around the world or something like that," she guessed.

"So what do we do?"

"We'll need chalk to draw on the floor, about five feet of space," she told him. "The symbol is right on the page. Get that copied down and I'll get the ingredients set up. This shouldn't take long."

He shoved furniture aside to make room and began drawing, checking the book several times to make sure he got it right while she put the materials in a mortar bowl and began to crush them. Once they were both ready, she pulled her knife from her pants but he grabbed her wrist to stop her.

"Let me guess, you have to bleed to complete the spell?" he asked her.

"Yes. It's part of the spell. I cut myself and get the blood on these herbs, then set it on fire. If she hears my call then she'll come," she said. "I have a better chance of getting her attention than you do."

"Alright," he said after a moment. "Give me the knife. I don't want you to cut yourself too deep."

The likelihood of that happening was beyond remote. She knew how to handle her weapon, but she didn't argue and instead handed it to him. Holding her palm in one of his hands, he breathed for a moment as he gripped the golden blade in the other, seeming like he was preparing himself for it. She was just about to tell him she could handle it on her own but he finally set the blade to her skin and drug it over her palm. She winced a bit, being reminded of her initiation, but otherwise stood firm. This was not the same as that, not in the slightest. That had been forced on her. She was more than willing to bleed for her family, would endure pain if it would mean saving her uncle.

"Okay, do it," he said with a nod. She grabbed the crushed herbs and worked it between her hands, getting them as covered as she could before placing them in the middle of the circle. Once done, he grabbed a water bottle to wash off her hand and wrapped it up in some cloth. He struck a match and threw it on the pile before nodding to her.

Emma took a deep breathe before she picked up the book and began to read. The air around her seemed to heat up and the smell of brimstone filled her nostrils. Her eyes began to water, wanting to cough from the strength of it. The words got harder to speak, her throat beginning to burn. A sudden fit hit her as the smoke rose up, more than there should have been from such a small fire, making her cough and choke as she tilted back. Dean grabbed her shoulders and held her steady and she forced herself to get out the last of it as loud as she could. She jumped back into his chest when a fire suddenly flared up into the room. A form took shape in it before stepping out and Emma tried to keep her watering eyes open as she looked at it.

Megaera stood before them, arching her eyebrow at the sight of the two of them as the flame died down.

"No," she said immediately, turning to the door to leave.

"Oh, no you don't!" Dean snapped, getting in her way. "We called you here for a reason, you barbecued bitch. Don't you even think about walking away from us."

"Whatever you want me involved in, the answer is no. I'm not putting my neck out for you," she replied coldly. "May I remind you that you shot me? Even if you hadn't, the three of you are way too much trouble for me to risk getting involved. More than that, it's against rules."

"What rules?" he asked, irritated.

She pointed at him, touching his chest lightly, right over his heart.

"Your soul has been claimed, Dean Winchester. We know all about how you prevented the end of the world, but it doesn't mean heaven and hell don't still consider you as their property. It wouldn't be wise of anyone outside of that jurisdiction to try and interfere or take you as their own. I've no interest in sticking my neck out and risk the wrath of your angels or my gods for getting involved and if I did a job for you that is exactly how it could be perceived as. Whoever you want to bring judgment on? Ask elsewhere."

"Wait, I'm the one who summoned you, and I clearly belong to the proper pantheon," Emma interjected. "So that shouldn't matter."

The fury looked less sure of that, her expression softening as she sighed.

"You are… complicated. Technically speaking you are correct, but you are your father's daughter. That muddies the waters a little," she stated.

"All Amazons are daughters of fathers who don't share our faith."

"And usually that wouldn't matter since most of those humans don't have the destinies he did," she scoffed. "However… I will admit you're an interesting one. An Amazon leaving the tribe is all but unheard of. It could be seen as a sign you've chosen-"

"I chose my father but I'm an Amazon as well as any other," she argued fiercely. "I won't allow anyone to say otherwise, not even a servant of the gods. I am proud of my blood and my faith!"

Megaera paused for a moment before putting one black stained finger to her chin, thinking it over before nodding her head.

"Fine. I will hear your request of justice," she stated. "Who wronged you, Emma Winchester?"

"I wasn't wronged really, but you were able to help my uncle before. He said you made his visions go away. He's sick, in a hospital and needs help. If you can banish what's ailing him, I'd be so grateful."

The fury sighed.

"I can't."

"Can't or wont?" Dean asked bitterly.

"Both," she replied honestly. "If Sam is suffering further due to his affliction there's nothing I can do for him. I could banish his guilt, and the images, for a time, but only moments. It would be like taking an aspirin for a broken arm. Whatever little relief it would give would be pointless in the end. Besides, offering remedies is not my job."

"Oh bullshit," he growled.

"It's the truth," she said. "If you believe me or not, it won't change matters. I'm no healer and what little I could do would be of no affect in the long run. I would suggest finding someone else to help you, if you can find it in yourself to ask politely."

He advanced on her, but the fury was already gone. His fist clenched in anger, he took the book from Emma's grasp and threw it against the wall.

"God damn it!" he yelled. "Why is it nothing ever works?! Why is it these uptight pricks can never get off their asses and do anything to help us?!"

"I'm sorry. This was my idea and instead of helping we just wasted time," Emma apologized.

"It's… you were trying to help. It's alright," he said, though she wasn't sure if that was true. "I'm gonna get back to making calls. If you think of anything else, let me know."

"She mentioned angels," she pointed out. "Perhaps you could contact someone of your faith?"

"It's not faith," he muttered. "There's a difference in knowing something is out there and putting your faith in it."

"I don't understand."

"Yeah, well let me put it this way. Those gods and spirits and everything else? They don't care about me. They don't care about Sam. They don't care about you. They use humans, chew them up and spit them out. I know they exist but I don't believe in any of them to make not a single thing better, not unless they can get something out of it."

"Then the angels used you?" she asked. Did this have to do with whoever Michael was?

"They tried to," he breathed before shaking his head. "At least..."

"Father?" she questioned when he hesitated.

It looked like he wanted to say something but she didn't know what. He seemed to be pulling back again but not with the fierce determination of previous refusals to tell her what was going on. He seemed withdrawn, smaller, almost hurt.

"There was one… he was different. He was…" he said before swallowing and rubbing at his face. "Well, he was a dick but he tried. He tried so hard and gave up so much to help me. If there was one I could say I had faith in, it was him. If he had any flaw it was he always took on too much. He felt he had to help, had to always throw himself in the fight no matter how much it risked himself."

"Sounds like you."

"Except in his case it lead him to making some really stupid mistakes."

"I'm not taking back my statement," she informed him, to which he shot her a look. She gave him a small smirk, showing him she was joking before he shook his head and patted her on the shoulder.

"Brat," he muttered. "You're getting a mouth on you. Guess that's my fault. Anyway, guess it's back to work."

"Want me to help make some calls?" she asked but he shook his head.

"I'm having enough trouble getting any information out of them and some of these hunters know me," he informed her. "A young girl calling on the phone with no ready explanation how you know Bobby? Not likely. You didn't even meet him before he died so you'd know nothing about him, and these paranoid sons a bitches love asking questions on details to ensure they're talking to the genuine article. Just leave it to me. Tell you what, why don't you make dinner and then look through some more books. Maybe we can find another being that'd be willing to help us out."

He grabbed the little leather book of contacts before giving it a second thought and tossing it down onto the table to grab another drink. However a breeze seemed to blow by and knock it over, causing Dean to look at it uncertainly.

"Did you..."

"I didn't touch it. I think this place has a draft. I keep feeling chills," she said, though she wasn't so sure. She'd seen it move and a little breeze knocking off a book that thick and heavy seemed unlikely.

He stooped down to pick it up, looking it over before grabbing a small green card for Mackey's Taxidermy. Flipping it over, they saw there was a cell phone number written on it. Though they glanced at each other uncertainly, he quickly pulled out his phone to call.

He waited a while before closing his eyes in annoyance.

"Yeah, hi. Uh… my name's Dean. I'm a friend of Bobby Singer's. Looking for some info. If you could call me back," he said before leaving his contact number. His tone didn't sound very hopeful.

"I'll start on dinner," she said, turning to the kitchen before stopping and suddenly giving him a hug. He could say all he wanted that it wasn't her place to offer him comfort but she wasn't going to listen to that. They needed each other to get through this and she would not allow him to face it alone, even if all she could do was offer small comforts like this.

He hugged her back tightly, resting his chin on the top of her head.

"It's gonna be okay," he breathed though she didn't know if he was talking to her or himself at this point.

She nodded and smiled up at him. Best to keep their spirits up she supposed. Walking off, she started to pull out some cans for dinner. They didn't have a lot, mostly just spaghettios, snack foods and other such junk but it was certainly better than going hungry. Though she was starting to see why he preferred to hit diners as much as possible. It was the closest thing to a home cooked meal they'd ever been able to have on the road. She hadn't had a proper meal like that since her mother had last made her lunch before sending her off for training.

A thought hit her that she probably should have asked the fury for information on her mother and the tribe, maybe where they were or what their reaction to being told she was still alive and a willing traveler to the Winchesters now. She couldn't help but wonder what they would think of that. Then again, it might not have mattered. They did not have the time to track them down now and they'd be long gone from wherever they were staying before she and Dean could arrive even if they did. He might even be stubborn enough to go on his own if he thought it was worth it.

Besides that, she didn't think she cared what the tribe thought of her. Every moment she spent as a Winchester made her care less about her tribe and the horrible things they'd wanted her to do. Yes, she was an Amazon, but she was going to find her own meaning behind her blood, not allow anyone to dictate to her what it meant. She might never be allowed to hunt but she knew who her family was and nothing was going to change that.

Once the meal, such as it was, was heated up, she handed it to him so they could eat, him mostly spooning the food in while looking over websites on the computer. The teenager left him to it, and began to look through the books like she'd been asked to. Not that it helped much. A lot of it she didn't know the language to. She had not yet got to Latin after all. If he knew it, she would have to ask him to teach her sometime or try to learn it on her own.

A couple hours passed and she was just thinking she should check up on him and remind him that sleep would be a good idea when she heard his phone ring. Curious, she sneaked back into the room as quietly as she could, not wanting to make too much noise and distract him. He seemed to be in a conversation with someone, though she couldn't really tell what was being discussed from the short snippets of what her father was saying. After a few moments he went silent except giving a small thank you and hanging up.

"Bad news?" she asked him from the expression on his face, but he was already surging forward to grab his car keys.

"We're going to Colorado," he said. "Now. Grab your coat."

She didn't protest or ask what was going on, knowing by now obeying was the best option. That tone of voice was a rare one from her father, but she'd been through enough with him by now to know it wasn't best to delay him with questions or comments. They sped off down the road quickly and he seemed to be in a rush.

"What's in Colorado?" she asked him, once she felt it was safe enough to mention it.

"Some kind of healer," he replied. "Just got a call back from the number on the card. He said he knows someone who can help us. Emanuel is his name, married to a woman named Daphne. Apparently she sends him out to help people. We're going to try and track him down, pick him up and get him to Sam if it seems like he can cure him."

She didn't ask what they would do if he couldn't. She wasn't sure there would be much more time after that and those were the kind of thoughts she would rather not dwell on.

They only stopped once to grab some coffee before heading out again. As it was, they didn't make arrive until morning and it was a bit out of their way as it was. Even if the healer would come with them right away, it would be nightfall again before they arrived back at the hospital. Emma was starting to feel anxious, the time seeming to slip away faster and faster. Telling herself firmly that in a couple days they could have Sam back was the only thing that kept her sane about the whole issue.

"Should I stay in the car?" she asked as he climbed out.

"No, but stay by the gate. I was told this was legit, but something might still be up. I'd rather talk to this guy for a bit first before I make any judgment calls."

She nodded her head and followed him to the house, staying back a bit as he'd been asked. Though if this was a trap of some kind, the so called healer had found a very quaint and nice place to hole up in. Didn't look very suspicious. Then again, she supposed that might be the point. Not like Lydia's home had come with a sign over it. 'Warning for all men. Sex in this home will result in death.'

Her father went up to the porch and knocked on it, and she watched idly as a man came outside, introducing himself as Emanuel. She wasn't sure what faith healers looked like, but she could only guess he fit the bill. He looked fairly unassuming, though she was shocked when she saw his eyes go black and Dean was suddenly gripped by his jacket and thrown against the door.

Despite knowing he would surely want her to run away, she was about to rush up the steps to try and help him. However before she could even move, she felt someone come up behind her and touch her shoulder. Whirling around to strike out at whoever the backup was, she nearly cried out in pain when she punched the man right in the chin only to feel like she'd smashed her fist right into solid steel. In fact, she was sure steel would have actually given way to her. He didn't even look affected. Wondering if her knife would even do her any good, she didn't even have a chance to draw it before a body rolled down the steps, the demon dead at her feet. Dean looked down at the two of them, shock evident all over his face.

"What was that?" the stranger asked, looking up at her father, though he seemed to be at a loss for words.

"Emma, grab the body. Move it into the bushes," he ordered after a moment as he quickly looked up and down the street. Luckily it seemed like no one had seen the confrontation. She grabbed the body and drug it as quickly into the foliage as she could. It wouldn't remain hidden for long, but no one would see it just walking by.

"I think it might be best to go inside," the stranger said, nodding to the house. She couldn't help but feel he was being awfully calm about seeing someone in front of him getting killed, and her father looked so off kilter. Something was wrong here.

Still, they moved inside where it would be safe to talk and the man moved to a woman tied to a chair, working to undo her bindings. Just what was going on here?

"Did they hurt you?" he asked her.

"I'm okay," she assured him once she was free, reaching up to touch his face tenderly. "But Emanuel, they were looking for you."

"It's okay," he replied as he took her hand and led her to Emma and Dean. He extended his hand to shake but Emma didn't really want to touch him and her father only did so after a moment of hesitation. "I am Emanuel."

"Dean. I'm… I'm Dean," he introduced himself. "This is Emma. She's my… She's my daughter."

The hesitation caused her to wonder but she didn't find herself insulted. Something was off kilter with her father. He didn't seem at all comfortable here and she wasn't sure it was from the fight. He kept staring at the healer, as if he was the cause of all his issues.

"Thank you for protecting my wife," he said, seeming not to notice the stiff mood in the room or at least politely ignoring it.

"You're wife?" Dean asked, almost seeming to stumble over the word. "Right."

"I saw his face," Emanuel confessed to said wife. "His true face."

"He was a demon," Dean said, his tone carrying as if this was supposed to mean something to him.

"A demon walked the earth," he whispered, seeming shocked and horrified at the knowledge.

"Demons," he corrected as if this should already be common knowledge. "Whackloads of them. You don't know about..."

He drifted off, seeming unable or unwilling to continue.

"You saw the demon's true face," Daphne said, smiling a little. Emma felt an itch crawl up her spine as she looked over the woman, something not at all right about how calm she was being about all of this. Something was wrong and no one seemed willing to say it. "Emanuel has very special gifts."

"Yeah. I've heard that about… Emanuel. That you can heal people up."

"I seem able to help to certain degree," he admitted. "What's your issue?"

"My brother," he said. "He needs help. He's in a hospital and no one can help him. You're my last option."

"Of course. I'll do whatever I can to help you, Dean."

Her father seemed to flinch back at those words before mutely nodding.

"Right. Well, let's go then," he said, turning quickly. He couldn't seem to watch the sight of the two as Emanuel drew his wife close in a hug, their foreheads touching gently.

"I need to go. I'll return soon," he promised her.

She smiled and traced a hand down his arm.

"Be safe," she said before she let him go and the healer walked out with them.

Emma cast one last look at Daphne, the sense of unease never leaving her until she finally turned around the left too, the sound of the door closing behind them. She didn't seem the look of pain on the woman's face, sighing as she locked the door slowly.

"I'm never going to see him again, am I?" she asked softly, her fingers trailing over the wood, watching through the window of the door until they were gone.

"Remains to be seen. Probably not. Plans are being rearranged but still doubtful," a clipped voice said behind her. Daphne didn't jump, only sighed again and turned to face who was in her house, a woman with long blond hair and a hard expression on her face. "You've done your part. That's enough. We have others to see to."

"He's going to be hurt out there, won't he?" Daphne asked. "It might have just been common law, but he's still my husband. Of course I'm worried about him. If there's anyway I can still help..."

"You want to help? Him, you can't. Though if you're willing there's another you might need to see to soon. Someone is going to need to be kept safe. If you're that eager, we can give the job to you."

Daphne quickly nodded her head.

"Thank you, Atropos," she breathed. "I won't let you down."

"Right. Just be careful not to get in too deep. You're just a water nymph after all. Not even a match for one demon. The Leviathans are going to eat you alive if you take a wrong step. You sure you don't want to stick to just rescuing Castiel for us?"

"I'll serve the fates however you need me to. If we're allowed to get involved, then I'm getting involved. That Amazon girl opened the door for us. We need to help if we can."

"Don't be so altruistic," Atropos snorted. "If it were up to me, Castiel would have drowned in that river you found him in. If there was ever a spanner in the works it was that lousy angel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious about Daphne the nymph, there are a couple stories about her in mythology largely concerning how Apollo was in love with her and she refused to sleep with men. Considering Castiel never went back to her, I'd assumed they didn't really have a relationship on that level.


	8. Castiel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been aching to write this for ages. Just… these boys and their intense feelings for each other. No matter if platonic or otherwise, there is no denying there is some strong, strong stuff between them and I have always been hooked by it.
> 
> As always, Supernatural isn't mine, but does Supernatural really belong to anyone these days? With so many writers for the different seasons, such a large fandom with all the theories, videos, fanarts and other things does it truly belong to completely to anyone? Well, CW would say it belongs to them but who listens to them anymore?

Cas was alive.

The angel was alive and sitting right next to him in his car, still and silent as a statue and staring ahead at the road without even moving a muscle. It was so much like an angel, so much like how he remembered Castiel that it felt like a punch to the gut. He couldn't help but glance over at him once in a while, looking him as much as he could get away with without taking his eyes off the road for too long. He saw in the rear-view mirror that Emma was laid back against her seat, her eyes twitching but every time it seemed like she was about to fall asleep, she'd jerk herself back awake. He had a feeling she didn't want to miss anything, despite the fact there had not been much time to rest.

"You can sleep, Emma. I got the wheel," he assured her, and though she shook her head, it was a sleepy and sluggish motion.

"Your daughter?" Cas… no Emanuel asked. His tone didn't sound overly curious, more making polite conversation than anything. Dean had felt odd introducing her as such back at the house. Coming face to face angel again, after everything had happened, it had been hard to tell him who she was. He'd expected some kind of reaction and he didn't even know what it would have been. He didn't know how Castiel would have responded to the knowledge Dean now had a daughter and how she'd come about. Understanding? Judgmental? Perhaps he would have just accepted it as another Winchester to protect.

Though… Castiel's protection had been more than a little off balanced lately.

"Yeah," Dean said softly. "Yeah, she's mine."

"She's a beautiful young lady," he said with a kind smile. "A little quick to jump to violence. Though I think I might have scared her before she punched me. I apologize."

"She punched you?" Dean asked, eyebrow arched at the memory of the times he'd taken a swing at Cas and hurt his own hand.

"Oh, no worries. I barely even felt it."

She grunted a bit and shifted, her eyes opening again before sliding shut again. He was getting the feeling she wasn't trying to stay awake out of worry about the road. Was she getting suspicious? She was way too curious about things for her own good. He could imagine a man she couldn't hurt with her fists would be very weird to her.

"Things have been a bit tense with her lately," Dean admitted. "Her… her mom raised her. Kind of made her into a bit of a spitfire. I've got custody now, you could say."

"And you bring her with you to kill demons?" Emanuel asked him. His tone never changed, never left that territory of mild curiosity and yet he felt like he was being judged somehow. It was his own guilt crawling around in his stomach, he told himself firmly. He felt guilty about too damn much these days.

"Not by choice," he replied with a shake of his head. "It's just that with me, it's the safest place for her right now. One day I'm going to find her a nice little hometown to stay in, safe and sound, where she never has to worry about any of this… stuff. It's the best I can do by her as her dad, you know?"

"I really don't," he admitted. "I have no children with Daphne. I would hope that I could be a good father though."

"So Daphne. Is that your wife?" he asked, the horrid reminder in the back of his head. A tense and hot ire flickered into life inside of him, the thought making him feel terribly sick. Anger, it had to be, and it was reasonable enough. Here the angel was, married to some chick and living out a happy little life while Dean had been mourning his death, hurt and angry and confused about all of this mess. He refused to look at it closer, too much on his mind already to give it much attention.

"She found me and cared for me," Emanuel answered.

"Meaning?" Dean asked, more than a little curious. He wanted to know how Castiel had gone from trying to cleanse the world in fire to married in the suburb.

"Oh, it's a strange story. You may not like it."

"Believe me, I will."

"A few months ago she was hiking by the river and I… wandered into her path, drenched and confused and… unclothed," he admitted.

Ah, might have explained why she had taken him in. The vessel of Jimmy Novak was certainly not one to sneer at, that was for sure.

"I had no memory," the angel continued. "She said God wanted her to find me."

"So who named you Emanuel?" he asked, even as he imagined finding the ever absent god and punching him in the face for all of this. If the jackass had ever bothered to show up, ever done anything about the apocalypse, then Castiel never would have felt the urge to go back to heaven. He wouldn't have had to act as a leader again Raphael in some crazy civil war. He never would have had to leave earth or Dean. His fists tightened on the steering wheel, thinking about it. The angel with him, maybe with Lisa and Ben… maybe… maybe happy and not with the weight of the world on his feathered shoulders feeling like he had to fix things because a fucking absent father didn't give a damn about the world anymore.

"Bouncingbabynames dot com," Emanuel replied. Dean was getting so mad he almost forgot for a moment what he'd even asked.

"Well, it's working for you," he stated coolly, his mouth dry as he wished he had a drink. This was getting to be too much. "It must be weird, not knowing who you are."

"It's my life, and it's a good life," he said with a small smile.

Dean bet it was. Part of him even felt guilty about ripping it away from him.

Because Cas was alive.

Even as Emanuel, he was alive.

He'd go back though, surely. He'd fix Sam and then go back and that would be the end of it. That was all. Probably for the best anyway.

"So, your brother?" the angel turned healer asked, almost sounding tentative.

"Sam," Dean supplied, not even surprised he didn't know his name.

"Sam," he said, as if to try to remember. "What's his diagnosis?"

"Well, it's not exactly medical," he admitted.

"That should be fine. I can heal illness of a spiritual origin," he assured him.

"Spiritual?" he asked, his temper seeming to rise up. It was taking everything not to shout at Castiel this was his fault, that if he hadn't done all of this his brother would be fine.

He broke his brother.

He brought his brother back from hell.

This was all too confusing. It had been hard enough to process all of this before. Having to explain it to the one that did all of it made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Someone did this to him," he confessed, some of the anger starting to creep up into his voice. Emanuel or Castiel or whatever he was calling himself now might not remember what he did but he was just as guilty.

At once Emanuel turned to him, the motion smooth and unnatural, even posing as a human it seemed so easy to see the fact that he wasn't one, not really.

"You're angry," he noted.

"Well yeah," he said. It was pretty obvious, wasn't it? "Dude broke my brother's head."

"He betrayed you, this dude? He was your friend?" Emanuel asked and it shot straight through Dean that he somehow knew that, that Cas was still inside of him somewhere. Nothing he'd said had hinted friendship at all, yet he guessed it somehow, knew somehow. He didn't know if that made it better or worse.

"Yeah, well he's gone," he said finally. Maybe that would discourage further comments on the matter. Did it really matter how Sammy got hurt? All that mattered was if he got better.

"Did you kill him?" the angel asked, not seeming to get the hint at all it was better not to talk about this. "I sense that you kill a lot of people."

The words were spoken simply but they still hit hard for him. A normal person shouldn't ask that kind of thing, shouldn't make such statements so easily. Once again, there was no judgment in his voice, just the calm and even tone of Emanuel, as if they were discussing the weather or a ball game.

Dean never would have wanted to kill Cas. Been willing to, yes… but not want to. He'd summoned Death because it had seemed like the only option. The angel hadn't been willing to listen to reason, wouldn't stop, but Dean had never wanted to, not even after what he'd done to Sam.

And then he'd gone and gotten himself killed and Dean had hated him for leaving him.

Only for him to end up in the car right next to him as if he'd never even left at all.

Except he had left. He'd died.

Oh god, Cas was alive.

He shut his eyes tight for a second before looking back out at the road and tried to keep himself from screaming at the angel and demanding an answer about all of this from him, why he'd gone and done all that only to come back into his life again but with no idea of who the two of them were or the strange and complicated emotions and history between the two.

"Honestly, I… I don't know if he's dead," he said honestly. It was true. He didn't really know. "I just know this whole thing… it couldn't be messier. You know, I used to just be able to shake this stuff off. Whatever it was, might take me some time but I always could."

He swallowed the lump in his throat, feeling like he was confessing a sin of some kind.

"What Cas did..." he breathed. "I just can't. I don't know why."

"Well, it doesn't matter why," Emanuel said.

"Of course it matters," he snarled out.

"No, you're not a machine, Dean. You're human," the angel reminded him. Right, like he'd know how that felt. Yet here he was… still giving advice, still caring.

Why was Cas still alive?

"Your friends name was Cas?" he asked softly. "It's an odd name."

"God given," he muttered as he glanced back up at the mirror to check in the back seat. He suddenly choked when he saw Emma awake and staring back at him through the mirror, a look of shock on her face. Before she could open her mouth and say a word, he pulled off the road quickly and opened the door before pulling her out with him.

"Is something wrong?" Emanuel asked at the sudden stop.

"No, everything's fine. Just give us a second," he said as he pulled the girl along. Emma was making protesting noises, but she went along with him easily enough despite the fact they both knew she could have ripped out of his grip without any trouble.

Considering he often made her do things she didn't want to, he had to wonder just how deeply the Amazons had ingrained obedience into her head. He himself at sixteen had been more rebellious and he'd considered himself a very loyal son who followed orders pretty well. Objections were one thing, but besides the time she'd pushed him, she never went against his wishes.

He really hoped her patience for that wouldn't dry up again any time soon, especially with their current guest in the car.

"He's not human," she accused once they were a safe distance from the car.

"Say it a little louder, Emma. I'm not sure the border patrol heard you," he replied, though didn't deny it.

"I knew it. I knew there was something strange about him. Ever since we got to his house everything felt weird. I never hit someone like that and have it hurt like that."

"Speaking of, how's your hand?" he asked.

"It's fine. Don't change the subject," she argued, but he grabbed it anyway and she scoffed but allowed it. It was the same hand she cut, and he removed the cloth to look it over. Scabbing a little, and overall fine. Her knuckles looked a little bruised though, but at least nothing was broken.

"Father," she said as she blushed while he looked her over. "I'm not a little girl. I'm fine."

He didn't say it, but the way she pouted certainly made her look like a little girl. He couldn't help but remember seeing her at a distance when doing the stakeout at Lydia's, hours later and she'd gone from toddler to a kid who had to have been about five or so. She'd been so small then and something in his gut had told him that things were wrong. If he'd gone forward, fought off the Amazons that had taken her away, she never would have been put through that training.

He pushed the sleeve of her coat up a little, looking at the brand on her arm. It had long since healed, but it would stay there forever.

She never would have been given this if he'd saved her tehn. How could she be proud of this damn thing, of her heritage and gods when this sort of thing had been inflicted on her?

"I'd give anything for you to be away from this, Emma," he breathed as he looked at her in the eye. Even as he saw pain start to fill her expression at his words, he knew what he was doing. Someday she'd be safe and she'd understand. "That person in the car? We need his help, but you're right. He's not human. He's… he's dangerous, okay?"

"Doesn't look dangerous," she replied.

"Neither did your mother," he scoffed. "Look where that got us."

"It got me with a pretty great father," she said, smiling a bit.

"Okay, now your just buttering me up. I mean it. Emanuel? We're getting him to Sam and then back to his home. You don't say anything to him. He doesn't know he's not human."

"But you know he's not?" she guessed. "You know him?"

"I used to," he admitted.

"Is he Michael?" she asked him suddenly. "Is he the one who hurt you?"

"No, Emma. He's not. He's..."

How could he explain this to her? How could he tell her all the things that had happened in his life? Where did he even start? 'Well, honey. One day when Daddy was four years old he saw his mommy burn to death on the ceiling because Daddy and Sammy had the destiny to end the world and the amnesiac in the car helped keep said world from ending and then exploded after driving your uncle coo coo for Coco-puffs.' Yeah, that'd go over well.

"His name is Castiel," he said. "He's an angel."

"An angel? What was an angel doing in Colorado? Is that normal?" she asked him.

"Ah, not exactly. Look, he doesn't remember who he is, and we're not going to tell him. It's important he doesn't remember."

"Why?" she asked, clearly confused. Honestly, he wasn't sure why on that himself. If Castiel remembered, he'd just be able to zap them to Sammy and heal him right up. He'd be able to protect himself from the demon that had come after his new wife. He'd also remember all the things he did and Dean was not sure he was ready to face that kind of crap. The angel might just run away if he was confronted with his sins.

"Remember the one I told you I had faith in? That's him," he explained. Her face lit up a bit at that, though he couldn't see how she thought this was good news.

"He came for you," she said, smiling. "Your faith brought him to you, Father."

"A phone call brought me to him. Little different, Emma."

"He had to have known you needed him, on some level. The gods work like this, Father. They give you what you need to face your tasks. If-"

"Emma," he said sternly, cutting her off. "Whatever brought him here, it doesn't matter. Okay? Once Sam is on his feet again we're going back to hunting and we're not going to talk about or to Castiel ever again. He's going to go back to his wife and live a normal life."

"Why do you insist on everyone being normal?" she asked, some heat in her voice.

"It's more about being away from me than anything. I bring a lot of crap with me," he muttered. "Come on, back to the car, and not a word to him. You got it?"

She scowled a bit, clearly not liking the idea. For a moment he regretted telling her anything but finally she nodded her head in agreement.

"At least you told me something this time," she grumbled.

"There's a lot I don't tell you for your own good."

"My own good or yours? Because it sounds like you're trying to let some of that crap you bring along with you go," she pointed out.

He looked at her for a second before he turned around and started back to the car, trusting her to follow. From the stomping of her boots, she didn't seem happy, but he wasn't about to indulge those kind of comments from her. It was understood between them when this Dick Roman stuff was over he was finding her a home, a good and safe home where nothing from his past could ever threaten her. He'd done it for Lisa and Bed. He'd do it for her too. He wasn't going to make his own kid into some kind of soldier in a war that never seemed to ever end.

It made him wonder just what his dad would have done if he'd been around when Emma popped up, but he quickly killed that thought. He didn't like where it led. Sam had been worried about Dean, had wanted to shoot Emma, but he'd listened to reason when his brother had insisted on not hurting her and explained she'd done nothing to threaten him, and that she had pretty much begged to die. His dad on the other hand?

Yeah, he didn't want to think about that. He was pretty sure his own father would have been too pleased to hear Dean given that title by a monster.

"Is everything alright?" Emanuel asked when they were in the car and back on the road.

"Yeah, everything is just peachy," he assured him. "Emma just had to stretch her legs for a bit. Don't worry. We're good to go again."

He looked over his shoulder at the girl, noticing the cut on her hand before she had a chance to wrap it back up.

"If you like, I could heal that," he offered, but she shook her head.

"No," she said. "I'm good. It'll be gone in a few days anyway."

"Are you sure? I don't-"

"I said I'm fine," she cut off before throwing herself down to the seat. "I'm going to sleep."

"I… I think I might have upset her," the angel noted as he straightened in his seat.

"Ah, don't worry about that. She gets kind of moody when she doesn't get her way. Then again, what teenager doesn't?" Dean said. He really wasn't equipped to handle a teenager for a daughter, but he supposed he'd done alright so far. Still navigating how far he should go in letting her be involved, and how much was safe to tell her about his past, but she wasn't as hard to handle as she could have been all things considered.

Heck, she was probably just worried about him. He hated that, that she was the one who worried about him. It really wasn't the place of a child to have to feel concern for the parent. If he just held himself more together than this whole mess would be easier to deal with.

"I suppose that age is the time when they start to get rebellious. Not old enough yet to find their own way, but old enough to know the time is coming. I can imagine it can be very difficult for them," Emanuel said. "Just as difficult for the parent as well."

"It's been… strange," he admitted before he checked the back seat to make sure she really was asleep. "Honestly, I didn't know about her at first. I mean… I shacked up with her mom, just a one night thing. Well, come on, you know the story. You're married."

Emanuel looked over at him, confusion on his features that caught Dean off guard.

"Story?" he asked.

Wait, was he kidding? After all this, he still hadn't…

"Well, you know. Guy meets girl, girl is hot, you do a little vertigo tango," he said, laying the hint on as hard as he could.

"Oh. Oh… no, Daphne and I didn't… do that kind of thing," he admitted.

"What? Really? But, come on, you're married to her," Dean said. Seriously? How far was this angelic virginity thing going to go?

"She explained to me she was not a fan of having sex," Emanuel admitted. "She said it made her uncomfortable. We held each other, cuddled, shared a bed, but never our bodies. I care for her too much to have ever pushed her boundaries."

Cared for? Dean couldn't help but notice he didn't say love… but that wasn't really his business, was it?

"Well, Lydia didn't have the same feelings on the matter," he admitted. "We hooked up and I bumped into her later to find she had a kid and… well, things seemed off but she didn't tell me so I just brushed it off. Then I saw Emma again when she was a bit older and just got this feeling. It wasn't until she was a teenager that I found out the truth."

"What happened to her mother?"

"Gone," Dean said softly. "Just left Emma with me and didn't look back. I've been taking care of her ever since."

"I imagine that must have been a sudden change for you. Has it been difficult?"

Dean hesitated for a moment before he nodded his head.

"I don't know what I'm doing half the time. I don't know how to be a dad. Heck… she calls me father and it feels so formal and weird, but I've never been able to tell her she shouldn't. She already feels abandoned as it is, I know she'd never react well to me telling her not to call me that. I'd much rather just be dad to her though," he confessed.

"What's the difference?"

"Just feels like I'm on a pedestal for her. It feels like she looks up to me and sees something that I'm not, someone decent and together that she can rely on," he said. "Here I am barely managing my own life and now I'm playing parent to a teen and… well, I mean I've been around kids before but this one's different."

"You have experience with children?"

Dean wondered if he was ever going to be able to think about Lisa and Ben without feeling regret. He'd moved on, as hard as it had been, but he'd done it. Enough time had passed that the spark of pain was no longer there at their memories, but it still made him wish for something else. That time with them had been great, happy for the most part, though Ben had worried him at times with the things he wanted to learn about shooting and the like. It was easier when you were a kid, he guessed, when the weight of those scary things hadn't pulled down on you so much. Ben had wanted to learn and Dean had nearly lost both of them to demons. Now he had Emma and she was even more insistent about being a part of this dangerous world of his.

"Some," he admitted. "Not enough though. It's never really enough."

Heck, raising Sammy had been easier than the rest of this, and even that had been difficult a lot of the time. He thought of himself at twenty-six, going after his brother to help him find their dad. Back then it had been natural to rely on family, to insist on his brother's help and scoff at the idea of him living a normal life and going off to be some lawyer. He wondered if he knew what he did now would he have still gone after him or would he just have left him safe in Stanford?

Probably not. That damn demon still would have gone after him and his girlfriend.

No one would be going after Emma though, not if he could help it.

"I'm worried about her," he said to Emanuel. "The kind of life I lead? It's not something you should put on anyone, much less a kid. She's too young, too inexperienced. She's got a chance to go out there and be anything she wants, anything at all. All she has to do it reach out and grab it, but she won't listen to me. Emma wants to stay with me, even if means walking head first into every bit of danger that comes after me."

"This kind of danger comes after you often? You and your brother?"

Dean looked over at him, the angel playing at being a human healer and didn't answer. He didn't think he could. When he didn't say anything, Emanuel seemed to understand the conversation was over and didn't ask again. Dean was getting pretty good at ignoring important questions, not allowing himself to give away anything too incriminating to the people who wanted to dig so deeply into his past. No good came from talking about this stuff. It was easier just to lock it up and ignore it. Just go on, one step at a time until it got easier.

Only it wasn't getting easier. It felt like his walls were being torn down, no matter how hard he tried to keep it all close to his heart. No matter what he did, what he said, he had others trying to pry in. Emma was so desperate to know anything about him and she just wouldn't accept that he didn't want to tell her. Maybe she stopped asking when he closed up but he could see it wasn't because she wanted to. She was just smart enough to know nothing would come from it. He was getting better at ignoring the questions, but it didn't mean they weren't still coming.

Even in the cage, Michael had him worried. It was better when they could kill the monster, do away with it for good. An immortal archangel specifically gunning for him? Yeah, that was pretty uncomfortable to think about. That damn fury was right too. The bloodline of John Winchester was inside of her, all because of a stupid one night stand. He was sure the angels would just love to get a hold of her if they could, and the demons too. Hell, at least he didn't have to worry about the Amazons getting any leads on her.

Amazons were hardly the top of the food chain when it came to supernatural elements out there. She wasn't the toughest thing out there. Oh yeah, she could easily overpower a human, but she was just strong, that was it. Nothing else that could protect her. She wasn't impervious to harm and she certainly wasn't the strongest thing out there. In all reality, she was vulnerable compared to some of creatures he had encountered. Why allow her to risk herself? For him? What was he worth?

"You're too hard on yourself, Dean," he heard, in a voice that sounded so much like Castiel his eyes snapped to him and he had to wonder for a second if the angel had read his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, not even sure what, but Emanuel continued. "I can see it. You carry a heavy weight on your shoulders. I'm not sure what it is, but it's there. I do not think you deserve this. Why do you carry it around?"

"Because if I don't then someone else would have to. Better I do it."

"Those that try to carry the weight of the world will be crushed by it," Emanuel stated, and the hunter could only laugh.

Oh, if this guy only knew just how ironic that bit of advice was coming from him, the angel who'd swallowed souls whole sale and tried to solve every problem this planet had. Really, it was ridiculous. Just what kind of stupid situation was he in? Out of all the people in the world, out of all the kind of people he could have found to try to fix Sam and this is what he ended up with? It was enough to nearly tear his heart out from the pain of it.

Because he felt like it was. Having Castiel be back with him, so close and yet so far away? Even after everything that had happened between them, he would give anything to have him back. He wanted to yell at the angel, scream at him for how he'd hurt his little brother, the only person in this world he'd had for so long. He wanted to shake him and tell him everything, to explain every little thing he'd done wrong in the past.

But he also wanted to pull him into his arms and never let go. He wanted to thank Castiel for everything he'd done. He wanted to assure him he valued him, and understood how hard it must have been for him over the years. Castiel had killed his own brothers for him, rebelled against heaven, all to give them a chance… no, to give Dean a chance. The angel seemed to have a bit of a soft spot for Sam but it had always been clear that he cared for Dean the most. He'd never really addressed it, too awkward to but it was there and it was so clear. He wanted to tell him he forgave him, even for hurting his brother.

He couldn't though. Dean couldn't do any of that. It was too hard to express it, too hard to say. He didn't even understand his own feelings for the angel anymore. What was the likelihood he'd be able to explain it to the amnesiac? Not a chance in hell.

Because Catiel was alive.

But Castiel was also gone, and he wasn't coming back.

No one ever came back to Dean, not willingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, Dean. Dean, please. You have people who care about you. It's okay.
> 
> Despite the mess of season 7, I don't think anyone can deny there was some really strong character arcs going on for the boys in this one. Between the lasting consequences of Sam being in hell, and Dean's pain of loss, it really struck home how much these two had been through without getting all melodramatic like some of the later seasons have been accused of. I certainly found it more compelling than Sam falling for an alcoholic vet who kept calling him creepy yet he fell in love with her. And that romance could have really had some weight to it, but it was bungled so badly Jared Padalecki himself said he completely hated that season, and Dean getting so driven on sealing hell he was pushing pills on Kevin to get him to stay awake longer to work harder on the tablet… yeah… not exactly a kind light was shone on these two following the last couple years. Probably why they wanted to end at season ten, only to get renewed which made the whole Mark of Cain thing last way longer. The Leviathans might have gone from Lovecraft horrors to Scooby Doo villains but at least the center of the show, the Winchesters, were still very strong. Its one of the reasons, despite it being so bad, I can still enjoy it as a guilty pleasure.
> 
> Don't worry though. The Destiel will not be all angsty man pain. I promise this will get happy for them as time goes on (and Dean stops being so damn stubborn about his feelings, arg).


	9. Memory and Madness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited to have finally been able to write this chapter. I've been aching to do a Castiel chapter in his POV for a long while now. It is, after all, a Diestel story in the works here so it was bound to happen eventually. Time to move the plot along and get some feels along with it at the same time.

The road passed along, stretching out at Emanuel watched the trees and grass by the road slip past. They'd had to stop so Dean could sleep, finally passing out in the car. He'd groggily told him to wake him up in an hour so he could drive again, yet when he had reached out to wake him, something had stopped him. His hand had been close to his shoulder, only an inch away before it had moved to his cheek, peppered with stubble and creases on his face. It had struck him as odd. Dean did not seem old enough to have such marks on his face, such worry on his brow. He had stared at him, wondering about it, how someone could look so young and so old at the same time. For hours the sight of the man had captured his attention, even as the night passed and gave way to sunlight. He memorized every blemish on his skin, the soft look of his lips and every way he shifted as he slept.

Emanuel didn't need to sleep, yet everyone around him did. It was a strange sight to him every time, like watching Daphne sleeping. He'd often looked at her and found her so fragile, sat on her couch as night passed and she slept in her room until one day she had smiled at him and invited him to rest next to her, even if he didn't need to. Watching her sleep had been the same as sitting in the living room and watching the furniture, unchanging, nothing different as she laid still under the covers next to him.

He hadn't found himself as nearly as fascinated by her as he was with Dean, and he didn't understood that.

When Dean had finally awoken, he'd checked the time and cursed under his breath as he started the car and drove off. Emma had groaned and rolled over, also awake now, but looking stiff in her bedraggled state.

"I thought I told you to wake me up," he had groaned as he began to drive. "Damn it, how much time did we lose?"

"Apologies. It seemed better if you got your rest. You didn't seem to be in condition to continue behind the wheel of a car," Emanuel had excused, not feeling it would have been best to share the truth.

"Get around to teaching me how to drive, and we won't have this problem next time, Father," Emma said while she'd stretched out as best she could. "I can drive while you sleep."

"Yeah, yeah. Add it to the list," he'd shot back, pushing the pedal to the floor and speeding off as fast as possible.

That had been several hours ago. It seemed Dean was trying to make back lost time as much as possible. A pit of guilt had begun to settle in his stomach. His brother Sam needed help and from the looks of it, it seemed he needed it as soon as possible. Yet he had allowed himself to become distracted. Though his words hadn't been untrue. He did not think that Dean would have been in the proper shape to drive, especially in the dark, after only a single hour of sleep. Still, perhaps it was not his place to prioritize such matters between their family.

The ride at that point had been mostly in silence, though the driver did occasionally make the odd comment, asking Emanuel about himself. He seemed interested in the healing he had done before, who he had helped. It had really been everyone and anyone that had come to him. There was only so much one man could do, but he liked to think he had made other people better as much as he could manage. The small talk seemed mostly polite though. It was clear there was only one thing Dean was focusing on.

He glanced over at the man, his head tilting to the side slightly to try to get another good look at him.

"You push yourself so hard for your brother," the healer said softly.

"Sammy needs looking after. He always has," he replied, refusing to look back at him, but he noticed he'd gripped the wheel much harder than he had before.

"What I've said seems to have distressed you. I'm sorry. I only meant that it's an amicable quality," he assured him. "I didn't mean any offense."

"Well, we're family. You never give up on family," Dean said, to which Emanuel looked in the backseat at Emma. She met his eyes only for a minute before looking away, glancing out the window. It was remarkable how much she looked like her father. Odd how he'd known them only a short time and yet the features seemed etched into his brain so completely. "Taking care of Sammy is just what I do. It's what I've always done. He's my little brother."

"That only makes it only more commendable that you've done it for so long," he informed him.

Dean's eyes met his own for a moment, his expression seeming to soften before he shook his head and looked away. He wasn't sure what he felt about this conversation. He was trying to say something complimentary and yet it seemed to have been distressing him. Even though Dean said nothing, he had the feeling his words were not having the effect he was hoping for.

"I'm going to stop for a bit," he said after a few minutes as they pulled into a town. "Gotta get something for breakfast, well lunch now I guess. Emma, you want something?"

"Yeah. Some burritos if they have any. Otherwise a couple of sandwiches will be fine," she said with a nod. "Um… Emanuel, you want anything?"

"Oh, no. Thank you. I appreciate the offer but I don't really… well, eat," he admitted to the pair. He could, but he never seemed to get hungry, and more than that it never seemed to taste as it should when he tried. He had shared some meals with his wife, not wanting to just sit with her while she ate and do nothing, but he wasn't sure how much money the pair of travelers had and did not wish them to waste their funds on him.

"Right. Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Dean said as he drove around until he found a convenience store across the street. Parking, he looked around for a moment when he got out of the car. He leaned in through the window to address his daughter. "Emma, stay here with him, okay? Just sit tight. I'll be right out."

"Okay," she said with a nod. The two of them watched him cross the street before she coughed a little and leaned over the driver's side seat. He couldn't help but notice her staring at him.

"Yes? Is something the matter?" he asked her.

"No. Well, nothing's the matter," she admitted. "Just kind of curious about you, I guess."

"That seems to be a natural reaction to me," he conceded. "I suppose with the things I do, how I help people, that is only to be expected."

"You don't remember anything?" she asked. "Like… nothing at all?"

"I'm afraid not. Before I was found, everything is a blank," he told her.

"Yet, you know you're not… normal. Not that I mean any offense but, you know you're not, right? A lot of people out there don't heal others like you say you can," she said.

"You don't believe that I can?"

"No, I believe it," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Trust me, I have plenty of reason to believe in things like this. I just was wondering if you realized you're different from other people."

"My abilities are different, yes. I am aware of that," he stated. "I believe God gave me the chance to help people, to do his work through me. I do not know why he chose me but it is a fulfilling feeling to know that I am able to help others thanks to Him."

She paused for a second and her shoulders sagged.

"It must be nice, having a purpose and all that," she mused. "Wish I did."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

She hesitated a moment before craning her neck to look out the dashboard window, checking to see if her father was on his way back or not.

"Promise you won't tell my father?" she asked.

"I swear. Anything you say will be in held in the strictest confidence," he assured her. It was not polite to spread secrets after all, and Dean had informed him about Emma as well. Perhaps they both just needed someone to talk to.

"When I was with my mother, before… well, before I ended up with him, I had my life planned out for me. I knew what I was supposed to do, who I was supposed to be. My family had very clear expectations of me. Thing was, I hated it. I hated what I was told to do and how I wasn't even allowed to object. Every moment it bore down on me that if I didn't toe the line, I would be a disappointment to her and everyone else," she said softly. "Then I met my father and everything changed. He didn't have any of those expectations. He took care of me in a way no one else ever did before. I feel so grateful to him every day."

"I'm sensing a but is coming," he noted.

"But," she agreed, "he doesn't really let me do much either. When I first ended up with him he just wanted me out of the way. He said he was protecting me… and I believe that. I know he worries. He worries about me a lot. I think because of what's going on with my uncle. It's driving him crazy and I'm just kind of along for the ride. Even now, when he allows me some freedom, teaches and shows me some stuff I feel like it's not what I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't want what my mother wanted for me, but I don't exactly want what my father wants either. I feel like I should be doing more, that I have some purpose, just like you, but I don't know what it is or how to do it."

"That's not an uncommon feeling," he stated. "You're young still. Many your age have similar circumstances. You're not an adult yet, but you're getting closer to it every day. It is a part of growing up, finding a spot in the world for yourself. It's perfectly normal."

"Not sure normal is the word for me," she snorted. He refrained from saying so, but it was a reaction many teenagers had to such words. All of them felt their problems were new and unique, that no one understood them.

"You have a long life ahead of you," he stated instead. "Time enough to figure out what your purpose is. You'll find it. For now, just trust in your father. He clearly cares a great deal about his family after all. You care about him?"

"Of course I do," she said quickly, her tone almost a little offended as if he shouldn't even have asked. "I wouldn't even be around if it weren't for him. He's been great. Takes care of me and he's patient even when I get upset and mad at him. I've acted out and he just forgave me, treated it like it didn't happen. He's the best father I could have ever hoped for."

He smiled at her so strongly stating her feelings for the man.

"I think you'll be fine, Emma. No matter how things turn out for you, you have your father's love," he told her. "Whatever he does, it's to protect you."

"How do you know? You don't know him," she pointed out.

"No. No, I do not. Yet I can tell he's a good person," he admitted. "He wears that on his sleeve, so to say."

"Yeah, I guess you have a point about that," she said before sighing out. "By the way, I'm sorry I hit you. You know, back at the house?"

"Oh, it's alright. Under the circumstances, I think such a reaction is normal. Besides, it didn't hurt," he assured her. However, his words caused her to frown. "You wanted to hurt me?"

"Ugh. Don't say it like that. Makes me sound like a jerk," she grumbled but nodded. "I mean, at the time I did. That's just normal. I thought you were attacking me. Now I'm glad I didn't… but… I mean..."

She sighed again and her forehead thumped on the back of the car seat.

"It's a big world," she grumbled. "I didn't realize I was so small in it."

"Beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. Forget it," she said before she opened the door and climbed out. "I need to stretch my legs. You?"

"I think some air would do me good," he agreed and climbed out as well. "Your father seems to be taking his time though."

"Probably looking for pie. He loves the stuff," she said casually, but he noticed she seemed tense. She relaxed a moment later when he came back across the street. "Wait, who's that with him?"

He looked up at her words and immediately felt panic rising up in him at the woman trailing after Dean. It was no woman though, something darker, sinister and powerful.

"Her face! She's one of them," he exclaimed to warn Dean, but she only smiled.

"It's okay, we come in different flavors," the stranger said. "No harm here."

"What do you want, skin rider?" Emma said, immediately on the defensive. She'd stepped between the pair and Emanuel, though he didn't feel right about a child trying to defend him, he felt too shocked to put a stop to it.

"Cute," the demon said the at the sight of the teenager bristling at her, as if she was a cat being threatened by a mouse. "Been a while since I've seen one of you. I can assure you, whatever you want to do to me? Not going to do any good."

"She's a… a friend," Dean explained in a way that did not sound at all convincing. "Emma, don't do anything dumb, alright?"

"Are you kidding me?" Emma asked. "What's she doing here?"

"Meg," the demon supplied. "Just here for moral support. After all, we go way back."

Emanuel felt confused by the words, but she laughed a bit with another smile that he was sure she thought looked charming.

"Dean and me," she explained. "Just met you, of course. But I think we're going to be good friends too."

She walked up to approach him but Emma took a step forward, clenching her fists with a snarl. Despite her age, she stood at the same height at the demon and seemed determined to stare her down.

"Back off," the redhead growled.

"Ooh, feisty," Meg chuckled, but didn't try to get closer.

"Alright, can we go?" Dean said, clearly exasperated. "We've still got a long way to go."

Emma didn't move, not until Meg went for the backdoor of the car and sat down. Dean arched an eyebrow at her and she hesitated before she got in herself.

"Great. Just great," the man muttered. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

The air felt tense but the healer didn't feel right about saying anything and just got in as well, allowing Dean to drive. The food was passed out between him and his daughter, though Meg took nothing and just leaned back in her seat comfortably. She seemed to be the only one who wasn't wound up, the other two seeming all of a sudden very on edge.

It lasted for a long time, until it got dark again and they drove and drove. No one was saying anything any longer, and while the conversations he'd had with Dean had been a little awkward before, it had been much better than what was going on now.

Finally he couldn't stand it any longer and felt he had to say something.

"This silence is very uncomfortable. Is there something I should know?" he asked. He could tell something was being kept from him, but he was not sure what it was. How did Dean know a demon? How was she a friend? It didn't seem like a friendly relationship, especially with how Emma had been stiff and angrry the whole way through, scooted back in her seat to keep as far away from the demon as possible. Meg had playfully shoulder bumped the kid a while ago and Emma had nearly jumped her before Dean had snapped at the both of them to knock it off.

"Oh, I don't know," Meg replied casually. "Dean? Something he should know?"

"No," he said coolly. "Meg just has that effect. Awkward, you know?"

Despite what she was, he felt some sympathy for her. So far, she had done nothing bad that he could see. It couldn't be much fun for her, being so mistrusted.

"That must be difficult for you," he said softly to her, but she only frowned.

"Dean's making a joke, Emanuel," she muttered, to which Emma snorted in laughter.

"Yeah, sure," the teen muttered.

The healer had a feeling he shouldn't have said anything. Tense silence seemed better than barbed and veiled words. There was no doubt about it. There was something he did not know and no one seemed eager to share it with him.

They arrived not much longer, but it wouldn't be as easy as walking in. There was a group of people in the parking lot and Emanuel felt a jolt run through him as he looked at them. Even from far off, he could see their faces, the same twisted and carnal evil at Meg and the one who'd attacked his wife.

"Oh gracious," he breathed.

"Damn it. Demons," Meg muttered.

"All of them?" Dean asked.

"No grass growing under your feet," she quipped.

"How many of those knives do you have?" Emanuel asked.

"Just the one," he admitted before looking at Emma. "What about yours? It hurt demons?"

"The ones down there, yes," Meg said. "But only barely. I've seen the blades those women are so proud of and it's strictly low level. Good for grunts, but that's it, and only if you get them in a vulnerable spot like the neck. Doesn't immediately destroy them like your knife does, Dean."

"You shut up," Emma said with a frown. "My weapon is-"

"Your weapon is a pig sticker," she replied before Emma could even finish. "Made for a war you couldn't hope to win."

"Was good enough to chase your kind off. I know my history. We did win."

"Pah. I was there for that history, little girl," the demon replied. "Your land and people just weren't worth the effort."

"Fancy words just to cover up you lost!"

"Emma! Enough," Dean snapped. "Neither of you are helping."

"I agree," Emanuel said. "What are we supposed to do?"

"Yeah," Meg said. "You know any other idea on how to blast through that, Dean?"

Dean hesitated for a moment before moved toward Meg.

"Excuse us for a second," he said as the demon rolled her eyes.

"Oh for the love of crap," she said before she followed him.

"I don't like this," Emma grumbled.

"I have to admit, you're right," he told her. "She mentioned a war?"

"Yeah. I don't care what my father says. She's no friend of ours," she said coldly.

He'd had enough of this. There was too many questions hanging over all of this, too many cloaked words with meanings he did not know. However, he was starting to get a picture. He walked over to the pair of them, determined to get the truth.

"I gather we know each other?" he asked. With every word Dean spoke, every moment passed with him, he became more and more sure of it.

"Just a dollop," Meg stated with a smile.

"You can tell me," he assured Dean. The man seemed so agitated, so scared right now. He wanted to assure him, to let him know no matter what he learned that he would not turn away from him and his need. He'd help Dean, no matter what. Why did he not see that? "I'll be fine."

"How do you know?" he snapped back, the build up in his body seeming to explode. Words spilled from him, like he'd wanted to say them for a while. "You just met yourself! I've known you for years!"

"You're an angel," the demon cut in, clearly not wanting to wait for the drama to play out. Her words only confused him though.

"I'm sorry. Is that a flirtation?" he asked her.

"No, it's a species," she informed him with a roll of her eyes. "A very powerful one."

"She's not lying," Dean admitted. "Okay? It's why you heal people. You don't eat… I'm sure there's more."

There was more… but Emanuel wasn't sure he knew what it was.

"Why wouldn't you tell me?" he asked him. "Being an angel, it sounds pleasant."

It certainly explained why God had given him the abilities to help so many people.

"It's not. Trust me," Dean corrected him. "It's bloody. It's corrupt. It's not pleasant."

"He would know. You used to fight together," Meg stated, looking like she was enjoying every second of this. "Best of friends actually."

If the words were meant to be reassuring, they weren't. In fact, it was having the exact opposite effect. The words Dean had spoken before were starting to come back to him.

"We were friends?" he asked and he couldn't help but note the moment of pain that flickered across the man's face. "Am I Cas?"

Silence greeted him, but it seemed to be answer enough. It was not that someone had hurt Dean's brother, hurt him, it was that the one who had done it was himself. He'd broken Sam and he didn't even remember who that was, no face in his mind to put to the face. He felt his heart ache for Dean, sure this had to be so painful for him. No wonder he had not said anything.

"I had no idea. I don't remember you. I'm sorry," he urged to him, wanting Dean to understand how sorry he felt about all of this. Guilt was building up inside of him, gnawing at him.

"Look, you got the juice," Meg cut in. "You can smite every demon in that lot."

He turned away from the group, his throat feeling tight. Despite her words, he felt hesitant. He was still caught on the pain this must be causing for Dean, how betrayed he had to feel about all of this, scared to tell the truth for fear of the consequences. How bad of a friend had he to have been that the man would be so cautious around him so as not to allow him to remember?

"But I remember know how," he said softly. There was so much he didn't remember.

"It's in there," Dean assured him. "I'm sure it's just like riding a bike."

"I don't know how to do that either," he admitted.

"Don't feel bad. Neither do I," Emma pointed out, probably trying to be helpful.

Dean only looked stressed out by the whole situation, and Emanuel knew he had to go down there whether he knew what to do or not.

"Alright. I'll try," he said before he started to stride up to the parking lot. He set off with a determination, hoping it would come to him if he started with enough confidence.

The demons noticed him approaching, seeming shocked at the sight of him.

"Hey, I know you," one of them said, glancing around. Wanting back up or just afraid, Emanuel wasn't sure. He supposed it didn't matter. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Yes, I've heard," Emanuel said before he grabbed him and yanked him forward. He almost apologized for what he was about to do, but the words never left him as he pushed his hand to his forehead to banish and kill the foul thing.

Memories burst forth in his mind, exploding inside of him without a moment of mercy. It flooded inside of him, the sight of Dean the first time he'd met him, the uncertainty in the hunter as he explained who he was. Castiel, angel of the Lord, a soldier on a mission to help Dean save the world. Dean, who he'd started to feel sympathy for in his hard life, who'd grown to feel attached to.

Dean, who he had fallen for both figuratively and literally, worked to save him and his brother… and he'd failed. They'd stopped the apocalypse but it had cost Sam and in it all, he'd betrayed Dean over and over again. Taking Sam from Hell and refusing to tell Dean, breaking his mind, unleashing the Leviathans…

All of it burned into him as he killed the demons without a single one getting away, standing there in the lot and feeling all alone and cold in this wide world. He heard words spoken by Meg, but they didn't register. Everything bore down on him, even as Dean called out for him uncertainly.

"Cas?"

Such a simple thing, a little nickname. It shouldn't have mattered to him. He'd been built as an angel, a celestial being who was supposed to be without feelings or longing, and yet the name meant so much to him.

And he'd thrown it away like it had been nothing, even though it had been his whole world for the time he'd been allowed to have with Dean.

He turned to the three, all of them staring at him but he only had eyes for hunter, not the two women behind him. Guilt and fear flooded him, fear he'd never have Dean again, that his betrayal had ended whatever good will he'd worked so hard to build with the hunter.

"I remember everything," he breathed as self-loathing hit him. "What I did. What I became."

Emanuel seemed to fall away as Catiel took his place, understanding hitting him with an unmerciful force.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because Sam is dying in there," Dean stressed.

"Because of me," he threw back. "Everything. All these people… I shouldn't be here."

He shoved his way past the group, intending to run. He needed to get away, needed to find some sense to all of this.

"Cas? Cas!" Dean yelled after him. "You two stay here!"

He felt Dean following him, and found himself wishing he wouldn't. As much as he longed for Dean to still want to be by his side, as much as he still needed the human, he didn't deserve it.

"Cas, if you really remember then you know did the best you could at the time!"

"Don't defend me!" he snapped back. Dean couldn't possibly mean that, and if he did it was even worse. The hunter still having faith in him burned and he hated it. "Do you have any idea the death toll in Heaven, on Earth?"

He'd caused too much damage, and while it had been with good intentions, there had been pride there as well. He thought he was special, brought back by God to save humanity and he'd abused that trust from God.

Abused the trust from Dean.

In all his memories, as long as he'd been alive… He was aware before humanity had even taken its first steps and the first thing that had come back to him was the hunter, their relationship and how he'd tossed it away.

"We didn't part friends, Dean," he breathed.

"So what?" he asked.

"I deserved to die," he stressed. So what? How could he say that? After all the hurt he'd experienced because of the angel and that was his answer? So what? He had to be hurt by this. Why was he acting so forgiving?! "I can't possibly fix it. So why did I even walk out of that river?"

"Maybe to fix it," Dean breathed. As if he could do that. Where would he even start?

He watched Dean open the trunk of the car and pull something out. Surprise filled him as Dean handed him his trench-coat, still stained with blood and grime. He still had it? After all this time, after what he'd done? Why? The hunter could not have possibly known that he was going to come back. What would have inspired such actions? Mourning? Loyalty? Castiel didn't feel worthy of either.

Yet he took it, because he couldn't refuse. He could not refuse Dean anything. He never had been able to, as much as he'd once tried.

"I'll save Sam," he promised him softly. "But how can you still believe in me?"

"Because you're Cas. Because… well, just because, okay? Does it matter?"

"No," Castiel admitted. "I suppose it doesn't."

It never did matter, not really. The things between them were unspoken. They always had been. That was where Dean was comfortable with it being. The human had never moved forward, never said a thing about their bond, and Castiel had never felt right about pushing his own feelings onto him.

How could he tell Dean he loved him so deeply, when he knew how unhappy such feelings would make him, how uncomfortable it would all be for him? He certainly could not say it now, not after everything that had happened.

"We should go," he said as he shrugged the coat on. As always, things were just best left unsaid.

There was only one demon inside the hospital with Sam, and it died just as quickly at the others, probably not even aware as he destroyed it completely and utterly. The younger hunter was a mess, twitchy and shaken as his eyes darted around wildly like a caged animal afraid to be hurt. He quickly freed him from the machine attached to him, wondering what kind of torture he'd been forced to endure.

"I never should have broken your wall, Sam. I'm here to make it right," he said, touching him to fix him, trying to remake the wall, build it again and make it stronger.

Only to have nothing happen. Dread and realization hit him as he saw it have no affect on Dean's younger brother.

"Oh Sam, I'm so sorry," he breathed.

They transported Sam back to his room, Emma easily lifting the tall and heavier man and getting him back in his bed, trying to make him comfortable. She tried not to touch him skin to skin as he jerked around, just pulling a blanket over him and whispering to him it would all be okay somehow.

Castiel didn't mention to Dean about her soul, throbbing strongly inside of her body and the mixed colors to it. He had a feeling the hunter had enough on his mind as it was. It didn't seem tactful to even ask about the girl, wondering how he'd ended up with an Amazon daughter of all things.

"There's nothing left to rebuild," he confessed to Dean.

"Why not?" the human asked.

"Because it crumbled," he explained. "There were pieces left after my actions, but they were crushed to dust by whatever is happening inside of his head now."

"So you're saying there's nothing?" he asked. "That he's going to be like this until his candle blows out?"

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "This isn't a problem I can make disappear. You know that."

Dean sighed softly and Castiel knew he didn't have a choice. There was one other option, one he knew he had to take.

"I may be able to shift it though. It would be enough to get Sam back on his feet," he said as he put a hand to Emma's shoulder, moving her gently to the side as she and Dean watched curiously. "It's better this way."

He sat next to Sam, placing a hand to his brow.

"This may hurt a bit," he told him. "And if I can't tell you again, I'm sorry I ever did this to you."

He tried to ignore the shouting of Sam as he felt the madness inside of his mind and soul, burning hot and angry. He grabbed a hold of it, pulling it inside of him. For a moment, the world seemed still, calm, nothing happening. Yet when he looked up, terror gripped him at the sight of Lucifer himself laying out on the bed and waiting for him, a smile on his lips.

"Hello, brother," he cooed.

He jerked up and scrambled away, pressing himself up against the wall as the devil laughed.

"Oh, one fallen angel to another, we have so much to talk about!"

Castiel didn't hear it, but he was sure he screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always felt that Castiel loved Dean and knew that he did, but never said anything because… well, it's Dean. The guy doesn't even tell Sam he loves him. It's sort of this unspoken thing on his part, and he gets very flustered about romances with men. Kind of in the closet about it, least that's the impression the show seemed to like to lean on.
> 
> In any case, if you would be so kind to leave reviews? I'm always eager to hear what you guys are thinking about this story and it helps keep me motivated and inspired. Pretty please?


End file.
